Today’s Watercolor Experiment:

Once again, I return to the photographs of our last visit to see Mike at his geriatric group home, in November 2013. Mike is my older brother who is autistic, low functioning and nonverbal. My mother and younger brother also came along. On the surface, I was not expecting any recognition from Mike; I had never gotten any before. That didn’t stop me from being extremely disappointed, when indeed Mike didn’t treat any of us differently than anyone else there.

The experiment below is a double portrait: my brother and my mother. I tried implementing some of the lessons from my previous efforts.

I have been trying to add depth to my paintings. In the painting above, I think I succeeded in separating the figures from the background. Also, I tried to do the same with the faces. The problem I encountered on this front was the scale. The dimensions of the entire picture plane are 9″ x 12″. In order to include the figures and the faces, each face is small, at best 2″-3″ square. That doesn’t leave that much room for me to change tonal values. No doubt it is possible for one to do that – but it isn’t me at this point.

The main attraction of this painting should be the hands. I’m not sure that the arrangements of the picture elements support this, however. The disconnection between Mike and Mom is clear from the expressions. The fact that Mike is inwardly directed is evident from his posture: He is holding his own hand.

A while ago I did portraits of hands: Resting Hands Revisited, Playing Hands, About to Hold Hands, Hands Full, Hands in Context, Expressive Hands.

Larger format?

I can solve the problem of the small faces by using a larger format paper. However, I need to think of a way to arrange this composition to highlight the focal point – the hands.  Perhaps more picture elements pointing to the hands, tonal graduations that lead the eye to the hands… a different arrangement of the figures, or some other technique.