The Sunday sky was clear of clouds all day. It was a crisp and clear fall day in which one is warm in the sunshine and chilly in the shade.
The waxing crescent moon was 31% illuminated last evening, October 30th. Rising in the southwest, this portrait was taken at 8 pm with the moon still low over the neighboring houses. Despite the previous few days of wind and rain, trees have hung on to their leaves on lower branches. The upper branches are bare.
The moon is on its way to full on November 10th and growing in light each night. I like how the shadowed moon still appears in this painting like another ghost barely seen, the Arches paper watermark. The watermark is probably only visible to me, but look for it to the right of the moon reading Arches sideways.
At 6 pm, in the eastern sky, these altocumulus clouds stretched out to glow with the colors of the sunset. This row of fluffy clouds blew north rapidly and were out of sight by the time I finished painting in the sky. This watercolor and the previous one are painted on Arches hot press watercolor paper which takes the paint differently from the cold press paper I've used up to now.
Why change paper? I ran out of cold press of course.
I paint on Arches French watercolor paper which has great surface quality and is very durable. One can scrub, rub, erase, load it with water and pigment and still it survives and looks great.
Watercolor paper is available in three surface textures: hot press, cold press and rough. I never paint on hot press paper. It has been rolled smooth and is excellent for detailed work which isn't what I am interested in.
I like both cold press and rough paper. The surface texture of cold press preserves the tooth that is smoothed flat in hot press paper. This surface texture creates small puddles of pigment and allows a more broken area of color on the sheet. The rough texture is my favorite because of the uneven surface which creates all kinds of opportunities for happenstance color interactions. After the painting has dried, ridges of color collect around puddles and form fascinating little bits of paint.
This sunset was painted yesterday on cold press paper about 8:20 pm facing west with low stratus clouds looking almost like distant mountains. For contrast, I'll use rough for the next painting.
