Today’s watercolor experiment:

Before I start, I want to say that I had a lot of fun doing this experiment.  In contrast to most of my previous work, I began this one with a compass and straight edge.  I wanted to further explore the theme of one of my recent paintings (New Approach). In that painting, I drew freehand, a geometric-ish construction that set up a way to draw a dividing line between an inward and outward-looking face. I circumscribed the two faces with hand-drawn arcs and drew a line between the two intersects.

None the background shapes dividing the picture plane in today’s experiment were drawn by hand.  One of the first geometric figures I drew was the apparatus needed to bisect a line. This required, a line and two arcs whose radii was equal to the length of the line.

I kept playing with arcs; circles within arcs, mirrored circles and larger circles. There is one underlying shape that was done with a French curve; the ovate figure eight was also done with the French curve.

Comment:

Somewhere during the process of doodling with my compass, I got the idea to have two eyes looking at each other. I saw a sculpture years ago by Bruce Nauman, I believe, that played with the same idea. He placed two television tubes in close proximity; one on the bottom facing up and one a fraction of an inch away facing down. As I remember the artists’ explanation, his sculpture was supposed to represent the god and man figures pointing to each other as depicted in Michelangelo’s painting in the Sistine Chapel.

It seemed like a perfect idea to explore. I enjoyed painting the individual sections, but I couldn’t finish in time to present a finished painting  to you, dear readers.

I did want to share it with you, as unfinished as it is. I will post it as soon as I’m done.

I hope you enjoy it.