The teacher of my watercolor class, Ron Pratt, had recently spent a few days in Colorado to film a demonstration video. He came back with a photo from a calendar that he found there, and made it the subject of our painting project. It was a very colorful fall color scene in the mountains. Here in California, where fall color scenes are not so easy to find, it is hard to believe the colors of other parts of the country. I always like painting mountains, so I made them a bit more prominent than the photo. I also followed Ron's lead in adding the river, which was was hidden by brush. Otherwise, it is pretty close to the photo. It was fun to paint with such bright colors, and I think it turned out pretty good.
After spending a couple of classes on the mountain scene, we spent a couple more weeks on a scene in the woods. I don't know where this photo came from, but to me it looks like somewhere in the eastern part of the country. The photo showed lots of fall color, but it was kind of washed-out looking, so I made up a lot of the scene to try to give it more life. Like the mountain scene, it was fun to use a lot of bright colors, which were added in a somewhat haphazard manner at the start. I usually like to follow a photo pretty closely, but with these last couple of paintings, I'm finding that I am becoming a bit more confident in using my imagination.
