I just finished Joyland by Stephen King. I am usually a slow reader, easily distracted by ambient sounds, an itch in my left ear, stray thoughts and shiny objects (for example, “Oh look, a chicken!”). However, reading this book was like a hot knife through butter (or budda, as I like to say).   To praise Stephen King’s writing, would be like carrying coals to Newcastle, but the story, interwoven between past and present; setting – the workings of an old-time amusement park (or carnival); the characters (from the greenies – college student, summer help, to the crusty old carnies); the murder; the smattering of the supernatural… everything propelled me forward.

I experienced plenty of emotion while I was reading. The same emotions that I experience as an adult at an amusement park. Not the happy, fun, wild abandon of the kids who are living in the moment, oblivious of anything else, but the melancholy of the inability to be in the moment any more (if I ever had that ability at all) and the genuine, heartfelt joy of watching children giving themselves over to… fun.

Today’s watercolor experiment:

I wanted my watercolor sketch to be moody today. I wanted most of it to be dark with a bright band of color at the horizon. Therefore, my first step was to mask out a narrow strip, a little bit above the middle of the picture plane. I drew half a clown face on the bottom part of the paper. I used opaque paints for this: cadmium red and lamp black. I must have glazed it half a dozen times with Prussian blue, to get the dark shade I wanted. I didn’t bank on the black of the eye dissolving in the first wash. I don’t think it took anything away from the overall effect of the study, however. I made the clown character’s real lips with a sad expression, in contrast with the made-up smile.

As the bottom was drying, I washed the top part with neutral tint, and dabbed some of it away, to make a cloud shape. After a couple of glazings and dabbings, I masked the clouds with latex resist and got to work darkening the sky. I used the semitransparent Payne’s gray for this. You can see the outline of where the latex was, since I didn’t have much luck softening, or blending the lines away.

After everything was dry, I overpainted the red parts of the clown face, removed the latex resist, and started working on the horizon. I used cadmium yellow pale for contrast, but decided that the glittery gouache colors would be more fitting. I painted the background skyline in black and pen and inked the amusement park rides.

Ode to Joyland
9″x12″ 140# Cold Pressed Watercolor Block