After a break, I returned to watercolor. Now I’m showing you a picture that you can easily paint with a little patience, even if you don’t have practice. The frost-milling trees are very spectacular, especially in clear weather. If you walk in a forest like this, you might look up at the sky, and you'll see a beautiful lacy contrast between the hoarfrost and the blue sky.
I painted this picture based on a photo taken with a wide angle lens. Of course, I didn't copy the picture, leaving more space for the blue sky,just tried to convey its atmosphere.
I moistened the paper with a spray and used light and ultramarine blue as a base.
I applied the paints in several layers and also sprayed salt on the wet surfaces.
I let it all dry naturally. I used to use a hair dryer, but it often blew out wet paint stains and the salt couldn’t absorb the paint properly either.
I then grabbed a thin, alcohol-based felt-tip pen (water-based isn’t good because there will still be layers of paint on it) and sketched the trees, radiating, thinning from the edge of the paper to the middle.
I strenghtened the trunks of the trees with a little payne gray.
From here, the process was a bit lengthy. I put white dots of paint on the trees to indicate the hoarfrost. Again, I had to note that whatever paint I had used to say white so far would all show a gray, dirty image on the paper. School tempera in particular!
I highlighted the tops of the trees where the sunlight is exposed with a mixture of a little gold okker and burnt sienna.
However, I managed to save it with a white gel pen. I run out of white pen very quickly, even though I buy it often.
I wanted to make it more contrasting at the edges, so I applied one last layer of ultramarine blue to the image.
Here is the finished picture.
