Victoria Olson Art – Watercolor, Egg Tempera & Oil

It’s August, and we are having a heat wave here in Madrid. No matter what the season, the Crystal Palace is always beautiful.

A visitor contacted me from New York for a plein air painting experience. She told me she wanted to brush up on her watercolor technique. When I want to show someone how to capture a view, the first place I think of is this marvelous building hidden in the middle of a little forest.

Just look at how pretty her watercolor turned out! The composition is lovely. In her watercolor, the palace looks majestic, it has a bigness to it. She painted each tree distinctly different from each other. The trees in the background are smaller and lighter in color than those in the foreground which gives the painting depth. She represented the water in the lake by making swirling paint strokes that read as water. The essence of the palace was beautfully captured. I am really happy to see such a nice outcome.

I also made a watercolor so I can share tips about fitting the scene on the paper, a bit of perspective and color mixing. Here are the two watercolors together. We have two different view points. The top painting was painted from an easel and the one on the bottom was painting from a small chair low to the ground. We really enjoyed our painting session. I am looking forward to seeing more of her artwork.

Thank you for reading my little story and have a lovely day.