"Spring Rain" demo

Misuk Goltz recently asked me to do a demo for her Thursday Paint-In at the Fairborn Art Assn. "Twenty to twenty-five minutes," she said. And this is what I came up with.

The subject has been one of my favorites since my first watercolor class. I love the way the paint flows down the page to create the illusion of rain and wind. And I've loved painting small trees since that first instructor showed me the wonders of liner/rigger brushes and how the small branches grow out of the big branches wherever there is a convex curve.

The ivy growing up the left tree trunk was the result of an accident. My paper wasn't quite dry, and the paint bled when I painted the trunk. I couldn't clean it up without it being obvious, so I overpainted with some Terre Verte (a fairly opaque green), et voila! -- ivy.