Short followup on Careful Rant:

I have yet to call the HM to get the official line about not being invited to a job interview for a position for which I am 100% qualified. When I called HR the other day they acted surprised: “You mean you didn’t get the official letter?”  I got it today, postmarked yesterday. More salt in the wound about not making the cut. But I am “welcome to apply for any other position…” Nice of them.

So…

Today’s experiment:

I thought I would try something cheery today. If you actually force your face into a smiley posture, ‘they’ say it will make you feel happier. Although I would characterize my personal makeup as being 90% cynical, I am not averse to feeling better. So I thought I’d give it a try.

I started by dividing the paper into different zones, into which I planned pairing different colors. As I took my pencil point for a walk, it seemed as if I were making a topographic map.

The first color pair I tried was lemon yellow and quinacridone red. I thoroughly wet the outlined area before applying color. I thought that the red would be the more mobile of the two paints, but the yellow seemed to creep into the red area. Good to know. I let the paper dry naturally and proceeded to the next outermost ring.

Again, I wet the new area and applied Permanent Violet (Utrecht) to the area adjacent to the yellow part of the center area; to the area next to the red, I applied Hooker’s green. I was hoping to set up a strong contrast between these areas, since the yellow-purple and red-green pairs are complementary colors. I applied cerulean blue and cadmium orange to the next swath of paper – an arch rather than a ring. I used these same colors in the diagonally opposite corners, applying them to dry paper.

Here is the result:

Cheery Composition

Did this make me feel more cheery? Not that much…

Next step: glazing

I intended to use lemon yellow and Prussian blue to glaze different parts of the composition. I thought that yellow would work everywhere except on the purple area, where the blue might work to accentuate it.

I wet the entire paper and applied lemon yellow as planned. I did not wait for drying before I applied the Prussian blue. That was an error.

After drying, I wet the center part and tried removing some of the muddiness. I then washed that small area again with lemon yellow (with a smaller brush). After that dried I washed the green area with viridian green and touched up the orange and blue surrounding areas with the original orange and blue colors.

Here is the final result:

Cheery Composition After Glazing
9″x12″ 140# Cold Pressed Watercolor Block

I have a subtitle for this study. I call it Angry Old Man with Blood in his Eye after Being Denied a Job Interview that He Should have Gotten by All Rights if things were Fair.

Funny how things work out.