Today’s watercolor experiment:

I started today’s sketch with a wash of perinone orange. I proceeded, after drying, painting a Winsor red circular patch in the middle of the paper. The red did not extend all the way around. I painted the other side with orange and brightened the a small section to give a bulbous impression.

What goes with a red bulbous shape? The rest of a clown face. However, I drew a Prussian blue mustache first; an elaborate one. I must watch too much Hercule Poirot, Agatha Christie’s famous detective with a trademark curled mustache. (I don’t think his curled around as much as the one I just painted.)

At first I just drew normal lips of someone who is neither happy nor sad. Then, I thought that I would try to overlay on that, the happy lips of a clown face. I did not have any opaque white watercolor, so I used water-soluble white oil color that I picked up as part of a sample at an art fair. I never understood the term ‘water-soluble oil’. It seems so oxymoronic. After all, oil and water don’t mix.

As one of the final steps, I painted the bottoms of baggy eyes.

Face
9″x12″ 140# Cold Pressed Watercolor Block

Comment:

I don’t know if the grin on the clown lips are not curved enough or if the mustache interferes, but this is not a happy face, clown-wise or otherwise. I don’t think this is a realistic face, or even a realistic expression, but for me it does convey a kind of resignation or sadness.