Iceland - Autumn colours

 

Of course the nature in our own country is very beautiful, but sometimes I want to paint something different, if only because that is a challenge for me that helps me improve my skills.

This time I got inspired by a documentary about Iceland and its nature and I wanted to paint that. My memory of the scene had to help me while I was sketching and later while I was working on my watercolour painting. 

Iceland is very volcanic and this scene showed a stream flowing in a typically volcanic rock formation. The lines of the black rock or solidified lava are beautiful visible and all I had to do is paint... Of course it's not that simple. 

Solidified lava is very black and usually watercolour artists don't use much black in their paintings, as the colour is 'not natural'. This time I decided to use Ivory Black for the rocks and as that has a slightly brown shade I added a light blue to create the colour I needed. There was a lot of light falling on the lava rocks so I left patches of white, added some blue and made the shadow parts as dark as possible.

The vegetation growing in that landscape (probably mosses) are showing brownish orange autumn colour with bits of red and patches of brown and that was mostly painted wet-in-wet.

Painting this landscape - without any trees in it - was a small challenge and an experience that I liked very much. The result is even better than I hoped to achieve.

The information about the materials I have used, the size of this watercolour painting and its availability can all be found in my Tumblr blog.