Tippette #23 - Painting Spanish Moss

Tippette = Snippet of a Tip (in watercolor).  One per day...during April...right here!  Tell a friend!

Painting Spanish Moss

One of you asked me how I tackle the subject of Spanish Moss.  That's a difficult question to "answer".  I thought that I'd show you some closeups of some of my paintings and maybe we could draw some conclusions from them.  So, here goes.  (Note:  The first 2 are on traditional paper.  The next 3 are on Yupo.)

So, what conclusions can we draw?
1.  I DON'T use gray (made from blacks) to paint moss.  I use color.  Refer to Saturday's post HERE where I talk about mixing pretty grays.
2.  Sometimes I leave the backlit portions of the moss as white.
3.  You have to be careful about how you paint the "top" of the moss.  I like to make it look like it's coming "out of" its environment.
4.  Show SOME branches in and amongst the moss.  It's more natural that way.
5.  Treat parts of the moss as a mass.  They're not all just long stringy things.  They have form and mass.

I hope that helps you to look at moss in a different way.  Do you have other tips for painting moss to share with us?

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