Concepts: Painting sky/clouds, wet-in-wet, painting trees/shrubs, painting wet-on-dry, composition, spatter
Materials: 1/4 sheet cold press or rough watercolor paper, a blue, a greenish blue, spray bottle, paper towells, various warm colors--yellow, orange, burnt sienna, red, red-violet pencill.
 1.Prepare a puddle of blue(I used cobalt blue), and a puddle of greenish blue(I used cerulean). Cobalt and cerulean are nice sky colors that do not stain the paper and are easy to lift. The cerulean(greenish blue) is for the sky color near the horizon, and the cobalt is for the sky nearer the zenith.  3. Turn the paper upside down so that the "land" area is on top and the "sky" area is on the bottom. Use your largest brush to wet the "sky" area. Pour off any excess water. |  2. With a pencil, draw a "horizon" line about 1/3 way up the page. Always have your horizon line either above or below the mid point in the page.  4. Begin to paint the sky. Place the greenish blue near the horizon. As you move down, dip your brush in cobalt blue. Make your sky bluer and darker toward the bottom of the page. Do NOT try to make a graded wash. Make some diagonal brushstrokes along with horizontal ones. Move the paper around to blend the colors. Use a tissue to soak up excess water along the edge. |
 5. Turn the paper back so that the ground is on the bottom and the sky is at the top. While the paper is wet, use a wad of paper towel to blot out "cloud" shapes. |  6. At this time, you can mix up a grey(blue+brown) to add shadows to the clouds, if you wish. This can also be done after the clouds dry. let everything dry before adding the Sumacs. |
 7. Make some puddles of various warm colors--yellows, oranges, reds, burnt sienna. Use your sprayer to gently spray the area along the horizon line where the low sumac trees will be. Start dropping colors into the "tree" area. Decide which side the light is coming from and keep that side lighter in color. |  8. Keep adding color to your trees. Use the sprayer and your brush to bring the color down into the "ground" area. Try to leave some white, and try to make the sumacs different sizes. Draw a "path" from the color under the trees diagonally across the paper to the bottom of the page. |
 9. I decided at this point to add some blue+brown grey to my clouds. I tilted the paper to let the colors run in the foreground. |  10. Add some texture to the foreground with some spatter. Take a loaded brush in one hand(I used yellow and orange) and sharply rap it against the forefinger of the other hand to create spatter. Allow the painting to dry. |
 11. Time to add details. The trees will need some branches, some foreground grasses, and some shadows to make them look more real. I Used cobalt blue, permanent magenta(a red-violet), burnt sienna, and burnt umber for darks, and Cadmium yellow and gamboge for the lights and grasses. |  12. Here I have added blue and purple shadows under the trees and along the "path", and yellow "grass" areas. Try to make your trees somewhat different in size from each other. |
 13. Continue to develop the picture by adding more darks and and some areas of more intense orange. Paint a little of the foreground color very into the clouds. CAUTION: USE VERY WATERED DOWN PAINT FOR THIS. Add some more spatter if needed. I added purple spatter. |  14. Use a rigger or small brush to add branches and twigs. I decided that the area at the head of the 'path" was my center of interest. I accentuated it by adding more branches and darker darks to that area. I used a combination of burnt sienna, Burnt Umber, cobalt Blue, and permanent magenta for branches. |
The finished painting. I added some specks of bright yellow near the center of interest at the head of the path.
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