Sal

If anyone cares to, they can see my murals in my Flickr albums.

Hope you don't mind, but I looked at your old family pictures too. Do you do genealogy? Those are just terrific to have.

What a great album. Thanks for sharing! ~Anj

With this painting, I drew on the trees, rocks and the figure. I then covered the figure with masking fluid, working within the outline. I decided which trees and rocks were going to be the lightest in color and painted them the way I wanted them to look.
When the paint was dry, I covered the painted rocks and trees with the fluid and let that dry. I selected my next color. Using this technique, you work from lightest color to darkest with each layer. I took a biggish brush and did a wash of color over the complete painting.I worked quickly on the trees that I wanted to keep this color. By removing bits of wet paint with a tissue, and adding a little more of the color on other parts of the trunks I was able to create light and shadow. When the paint was dry, I covered the trees I had just done with the masking fluid.
I just kept doing this, layer after layer of color, masking off areas of trees, ground, and rocks.
In the end you get this big black blob of water color paper and it looks absolutely horrible.
You take out your pink eraser and carefully start using it to rub off that rubbery masking fluid. In the end, surprise, you have a picture!
It was fun to do, and if you ever want to try it, you might like to do an abstract to start off. That way you don't have to worry about anything, just let yourself go with the flow. If you like the picture when you're done, you can frame it and hang it in the living room. If you don't care for the way it turned out, tear it up and try another one.
The artist who illustrated how to do this in his book loved the fact that he never knew what he was going to get, a keeper or a tosser.