Katie Koch Designs

I despise drawing trees. The branches never look quite right. The leaves are weird. A stand of trees off in the distance isn’t bad. And obviously I have some love for  birch trees, but of course those are close up and you don’t have the branches and leaves to contend with in those pictures. However, as much as I hate drawing and painting trees, I also love them. They’re beautiful and stately and they make a landscape all the better. So...that being said, I have started to try and push myself into figuring out trees. You know which ones are a lot easier to start with? Pine trees. They have a simplicity and a balance to their branches that makes them a little less frustrating. So this is where I started. While I worked on trees, I also worked on my watercolor technique. I don’t feel like you can ever mess up watercolor. Not everyone agrees with me but I’ve usually been able to fix any weird mistakes. Your color is too dark? Add water. Not enough color? Add paint. With watercolor ...

Canvases are expensive. Not like they used to be, but still...that big painting hanging behind your parents’ couch costs a bit more than the 5”X5” you did at the “Paint and Pinot” Bar with your girlfriends. Did you know you can paint over canvases that you’ve done before? Or in my case, I pick up canvases at garage sales and thrift stores super cheap. The “masters” did that way back in the day to save money. Why shouldn’t I try it too? Here’s where I started. You can see how dark the oil painting is. I used some rubbing alcohol to take off any finish and grime built up from wherever it was previously hung.  Then I applied a few coats of gesso to prime the painting. On this particular one I used Golden’s Absorbent Ground after the gesso. It took 3 or 4 coats before I was happy. Basically this gives the canvas a more paper-like finish. My first love is watercolor and that’s what I planned to use here.  I used tape to give the trees some better definition ...