Today’s watercolor experiment:

With the artwork of Alexej Jawlensky still on my mind, I tried to create portraits of my brother Mike* in as simple a way as possible.  It takes a lot of work to be simple!

I revisited yesterday’s portrait (Mike Crying) with the idea of finding a way to create the same feeling with as few brush strokes as possible. In my first attempt, I worked from memory.

Two features of this sketch worked: the eye looking at the viewer and the delicate hand supporting Mike’s head. However, if one compares it to yesterday’s sketch, the impact is much less.

I tried again:

I deliberately placed the head off-center and partially off the page. But again, the impact is not as great as my attempt from yesterday.

I do think it possible to distill the salient features of the original photograph into a stylized abstract composition consisting of shapes and colors.

It should be a simple matter, but it isn’t. I’ll keep trying.

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• Mike is my older brother who is autistic, low functioning and nonverbal.