Where Green Reigns Supreme
February 10, 2020
In watercolour-land much discussion takes place over how one goes about dealing with an abundance of greens in a given landscape. Summer landscapes abound with green, all of them different in hue and tone and degree. The old school adherents council the need to create greens from the various blues and yellows available on one’s pallet–that using those pre-mixed greens directly from tubes will only clash.
So if one is using Cobalt Blue for one’s sky, for example, using it with a Raw Sienna or New Gambodge for a foliage green will integrate it, anchor it and serve to unify the painting, as long as one then also uses the Raw Sienna and New Gambodge in other parts of the painting as well.
There are, however, such a huge variety of pre-mixed Greens being offered, it is almost too tempting not to use them, or at least borrow from them when mixing a blue and yellow, as was done in this little sketch of a Bulacan yard, Philippines. My spouse, Raul, is from there, and I stayed for a month each time over three years, a place so fresh and lush, it is a virtual and visual smorgasbord of every green there is.
watercolour sketch, 5″ x 7″ on ordinary card
by Lance Weisser
Bulacan Backyard
January 12, 2012
In 2003 I visited The Philippines after meeting the person online who would turn out to be my partner and husband. This part of the country is just outside Manila in the Province of Bulacan (the word ‘bulak’ means cotton, which there was quite a bit of when King Philip of Spain took over the islands in the 16th century). The little barangay (community) of San Jose is part of the larger municipality called Plaridel.
In the yard of the family I was staying with in San Jose were all kinds of trees and plants. This was to be the first of three visits I made over three years until I brought my partner to Canada in 2007. He is now an LPN in a geriatric facility here in Kamloops, and a Canadian citizen, and has come to love our -20C winters and +40C summers. We were married by my Pastor sister in 2008 in Clearwater, B. C., at a beautiful resort there.
This painting was done while sitting on the porch, and reminds me of that first, personally-momentous visit over eight years ago . . .
'Bulacan Backyard'
weisserwatercolours 