Today’s watercolor experiment:

I haven’t given up on facial profiles. I had good luck with my New Approach. The painting turned out really well, even though it started as a test of my new brush. Other recent posts include parts of faces (Part of a Face, The Optimist). In the matter of profiles, I think I just like drawing contours.

Today I tried to combine negative and positive shapes. I first applied latex masking fluid and spread it around with my special bone letter opener, to approximate facial contours. I arranged them concentrically, like those Russian nested dolls. I dripped the latex elsewhere on my paper… without any preconceived notion of where or why.

After the latex dried, I proceeded normally, as if it wasn’t there. I applied a combination of washes including English yellow and gamboge. After drying, I drew facial profiles in perinone orange and Winsor red.  As in my New Approach painting, I drew arcs around the faces.  The left-most red figures are intersections of profiles, each facing in the opposite direction. This is the only case where the circumscribing arcs intersect.

I removed the latex and painted the profiles, (from right to left): ultramarine blue; permanent mauve/quinacridone purple combination and Prussian blue.

Too Many Voices
9″x12″ 140# Cold Pressed Watercolor Block

Comment:

Facial profiles can be used iconically, for instance one can draw an expressionless silhouette while displaying a nested profile expressing extreme emotion. In my Janus watercolor, one face looks forward and the other backward, a perfect way to depict the Roman God of Transitions.  In my study above, the arcs containing the faces reminded me of sound waves. I imagined that the presence of all these faces generating sound waves would be rather cacophonous.