Winter Trees and Icy Creek

Winter Trees and Icy Creek

Monochrome Burnt Umber WN Watercolour Marker

Stillman & Birn 7" square Delta watercolour journal

I love these watercolor markers. The brush tip is bold and flexible, the colors are artist grade archival and pigmented, and they wash out easily with a water brush. Today's is mostly an exercise in tree shapes, snow by implication, negative space and ice around darker water. 

I attended the last session of Paint Along 21 with Johannes Vloothuis online and the creek isn't the same one as Jo's demo but was inspired by it. I remembered too many times as a kid seeing creeks and ponds partly iced over, the water looked dark but the ice was just pale and translucent. It'd crack if you trod on it or even leaned with your foot. Lot of puddle ice cracking actually, and fascinated looking at ice patterns in puddles and running water especially.

Played with tree shapes and atmospheric recession too, moving smaller ones into a misty distance by running the water brush over the tip of the marker and painting with that, then a dash of color into their tips while wet to strengthen them and let them gradate lighter at the base. Mist would come up or snow get blown along in breezes sometimes obscuring the bases of trees.

So this little sketch is just a design exploration from memory.  I can easily improve on that - but it's much easier to do when I see it on paper than if I just start without a clear idea.  More on this theme to come!