Saturday, October 13, 2018

There is a farmhouse with a magnificent tree in front of it near Wattaquadock Hill Road in Bolton. It seems to be Prospect Farm (see Bolton Reconnaissance Report quoted below).
Driving by, I parked and drew the house (below) in charcoal on tan paper, 9x12 inches.

I scaled up the drawing with the help of a photo, to a large size canvas:


 and spent several sessions at the site:


According to page 26 the Bolton Reconnaissance Report (https://www.mass.gov/files/documents/2016/08/ua/bolton.pdf) this farm is a historic property:
"Prospect Farm, 22-58 W. Berlin Road.  Also known as Taylor Farm and Philbin Farm East slope of Wattaquadock Hill. Includes the ca. 1800 Pollard House, the S.C. Pollard House of ca. 1805/1847, and Capt. Curtis Pollard barns and outbuildings. Pollard was farmer and wheelwright. Congressman Philip Philbin, who had dairy farm here, owned property from 1942-1971."

Now that the weather has turned cold I am not sure if I will get out there again.  The painting is unfinished. 
Note January 12, 2019  I'm still working on the painting indoors; now it is at the stage below:

Monday, October 8, 2018

Maple Leaf Watercolor Cards

The autumn maples have started dropping leaves that are very beautiful so I picked a few up to attempt to copy the color patterns.  On the leaves,  some colors blend but others have sharp edges.  Light value veins stand out. 

Here is my first attempt:

The first attempt has leaf edges off the page - a good thing, according to the compositional rule; and the finished card has interesting negative shapes.  Later cards used smaller leaves, so the leaf was surrounded by the paper background:

My method for preserving the leaf veins as white paper using a burnishing tool was not as effective as I wanted:  the ball point of the tool imprinted lines on the paper which then absorbed more watercolor not less: the opposite of what I wanted.

So I tried using white wax candle to outline the veins instead of waxed paper and burnishing tool:

Which do you prefer?