Tendick Prairie in August

Tendick Park in August is an impressionistic watercolor of a beautiful Ozaukee County Park in full bloom.  Wildflowers, wetlands and prairies cover over 100 acres of rolling landscape.  I visited Tendick Park on a sunny day and have tried to capture the blue sky, the natural wild abundance of coneflowers, black-eyed susans, Indian paintbrush, all flanked by woods and a giant oak tree.

 I prepared the watercolor paper by sketching the outlines of the flowers blowing every which way in the wind, then filling in the outlines with masking fluid to preserve sharp edges and shapes.  Next, I soaked the paper and freely spread colors randomly over the surface.  While still wet, I scraped the paint with a palette knife, sprinkled some areas with salt and lifted others in order to create a loosely textured background for the prairie flowers.  When this was dry, I rubbed off the masking fluid to reveal crisply drawn, white shapes.  The remainder of the painting was painted directly, yet loosely, sometimes going over the lines, sometimes bleeding into other shapes, intentionally creating an interactive, lost and found connection between the abstract underpainting and the consciously rendered grasses and flower pattern.   I deliberately left some areas unpainted or touched with just a brushstroke or two in order to give the viewer a feeling of movement, uncontrived patterns and the natural chaos of a wild prairie.

This painting was created on Arches 300 lb. hot pressed watercolor paper with transparent tube watercolors.  It is painted out to the deckled edges , float mounted, double matted and framed in a 3" wide brushed aluminum frame.