Once again, I was thumbing through one of my art books about Paul Klee.  Of all the drawings I flipped past, Untamed Waters from 1934, stuck in my mind. I tried to find a link to this work, but I could not. This figure, pictured in the book as black and white, contains a multitude of lines, although not parallel, roughly arranged to indicate flow. The major group of uninterrupted lines traverses the picture frame from bottom left to upper right. There are other sets of lines that travel from the upper left to lower right which are interrupted and re-directed by other nearly-parallel lines and by the race of lines flowing from bottom left to upper right. The name, Untamed Waters is appropriate for this work, as one can see from the interplay of line against line and the bending of line bands to indicate turbulence.

I was thinking of Untamed Waters when I started the watercolor below.

Today’s watercolor experiment: between the lines

I began with a number 2B pencil and drew gentle curves of nearly parallel lines. The primary visual element of this study is a set of horizontal lines placed in the lower-middle portion of the picture plane. They form a bulge toward the right-hand side of the paper. This main figure interrupts the other sets of lines serving as complementary visual elements.

Colors:

For the middle figure, I used all the reds in my palette: rose madder for the outer bands; permanent alizarin crimson for the next-most inner band; quinacridone red for the next band and permanent quinacridone purple for the central band. I did not glaze this section, but rather reenforced the colors by repainting each band.

The golden arc from the bottom to the upper right contains bands of Duo Autumn Mystery, Duo Desert Bronze (Daniel Smith) and Imitation Gold gouache (Winsor Newton).

For the green bands I used: Hooker’s green, chrome green, thalo yellow green, olive green and shadow green.  I glazed this band with viridian green in order to get a unifying effect.

I used a range of blues for the bands that arise from the bottom of the picture frame: cobalt teal, cerulean blue (the greener blues); I used French ultramarine – a reddish blue – to bracket the inner blues.  I glazed the blues with Prussian blue, which had the effect of muting most of the color differences between the bands.

The same metallic pigments used on the main golden arc color the upper swirl, and together with a light permanent mauve and quinacridone purple, form the upper part of the composition.

Cadmium yellow pale slashes the space between the green and red bands.

I left out a description of the most notable element of this composition: the non-line-like grayish blob that interrupts the red bands. At the flat end of this blob, I inserted orange spirals, which I glazed over with aureolin yellow.

Most of the lines indicate a smooth, or laminar flow (if they indeed represent flow of a liquid substance). As I mentioned, the gray blob is butting against the smoothness of the red lines. The orange spirals trailing behind suggest a bit of turbulence in this otherwise laminar world.

Perhaps a better name for this piece is Feel the Burn, as if the red lines represent the red meat of muscle and the gray blob carries pure energy in its wake.