Note to reader:

I write my blog entries and paint my watercolor studies the day before I schedule them for posting. I worked on the watercolor below without conscious knowledge that I would post it on the 13th anniversary of the  horror of 9/11/2001.  I was living in NYC on that day and saw the towers collapse. I still can’t hold those feelings in my head for too long. I don’t think that my memories of September 11 had anything to do with my watercolor today. Perhaps my subconscious would disagree.

Today’s watercolor experiment:

I took a little break from my ‘brain series’ watercolors (Brain Teasers, Compartmentalization, Memory Fades, Untitled, Brain Abstract), to work from a different place.

I began with a couple of circular blobs of blue watercolor: a reddish blue, ultramarine and a greenish blue, cobalt teal. I find the mixture of quinacridone purple and blue to be particularly pleasing, so I applied a crescent of it to the edge of the wet blue shapes. There is a reason that red is classified as a warm color. A hot iron poker is visibly red. Blue is cool. Anyone who has seen arctic ice can vouch for that.

The red-edged, blue blobs reminded me of falling objects being heated by the atmosphere. Objects falling fast enough to become red hot usually leave a trail. I used a combination of indanthrone blue and cadmium yellow pale in the wake of the red-blue shapes.

I have no reasoning for the English yellow field on the left side of the picture plane except that I really like the gentle orange tone of this particular color.

Perhaps I should not have broken my rule of naming my abstract creations. Please feel free to imagine this watercolor study as something else.