Blog history

My blog started out (from January to November 2013) as a review of my experience as a sibling of an autistic individual. Michael is my older brother who is very low functioning, autistic and nonverbal. My mother, younger brother and I visited him in his geriatric group home at the beginning of November 2013. After that visit I decided it was time to change the focus of my blog to expression of my own thoughts and feelings. It was clear that Mike is as happy as he can be and has people who care about him and care for him.

My urge to communicate my emotional state in a meaningful way, results from my history with my older brother. I wonder if this is a characteristic of other siblings of autistic family members. I am able to explain myself very well as a writer, but I feel I can say so much more with the visual arts.

As with any discipline, one doesn’t improve without practice or curiosity about the work of other practitioners. My quest is to continually improve my technique in the visual arts; to produce my version of a scene before my eyes; to make the leap to represent what is in my mind’s eye and eventually to represent what is in my heart.

Today’s experiment

I’m on a schedule. I have to paint the fruit I bought before it goes bad. Yesterday, I tried my hand at glazing. The blood orange was relatively easy to paint in this manner, as there was nothing external to indicate its blood orange-ness. It was just orange. In glazing terms, this means a layer of yellow and a layer of red. Different reds for different shading. End of story.

For today’s experiment, I expected true bloodiness as I cut the orange in half. But no! It just looked like a small pink grapefruit, with an orange peel. How disappointing. The Korean melon was equally as bland. The outside was a pastelish-looking yellow with even lighter yellow longitudinal stripes. The inside was a buff white color, with equally colorless seeds hanging from three sides.

Anemic Blood Orange and Korean Melon
5″x7″ 140# Cold Pressed Watercolor Block

I have a feeling I will revise this sketch. In its present form it is as bland as can be. Even if this is the reality of the situation, it doesn’t make for an interesting watercolor. I must think of a way to increase the tonal range without going overboard. Perhaps a very dark background at the top of the paper; a deeper yellow-orange for the melon skin; exaggeration of the seeds inside. I don’t think there is anything I can do about the paper plate on which the fruit rests. It is a very crude representation and I should probably not admit that it is indeed a paper plate. It would be better to leave it as is and allow the viewer to interpret for him or herself the meaning of the abstract arcs that lead the eye from one side of the sketch to the other.

The sketch as displayed above is not a complete success. Whether it is salvageable is another story.

I need better fruit.