Joy is sick. Within hours, her scratchy throat bloomed to a 101.9 fever. Pain. Throbbing headache. She could not find a comfortable position. All night long. Today’s watercolor experiment: Process: I walked my pencil point lightly around the contour of two hands holding the feverish head I would paint. I began painting the pulsating-temple headache with […]
Today’s watercolor experiment: Process: Yesterday I was thinking about making the hands I paint more abstract. I started today with two Payne gray brushstrokes. The first one (on the left) was spot on. It had just the contour I wanted. The second one was a bit off, but not terribly. As with yesterday’s study, I incorporated […]
Inspiration: One of the blogs I follow, The Last Post by Pippa Rathborne, had a very interesting entry about Henry Siddons, who had a passion for acting but no talent. My impression is that he was quite similar to Antonio Salieri, as portrayed in the film, Amadeus. Salieri was tormented by the effortless genius of Mozart in […]
Today’s watercolor experiment: Inspiration: I had a nice discussion with my colleague today about the pyramidal tract, a group of neurons that traverse from the motor area of the cerebral cortex to the spinal cord. One notable feature of this aggregate of neurons is that they are visible to the naked eye on the ventral aspect […]
Today’s watercolor experiment: Process: I began with wet paper again today. I wasn’t planning to practice cloud making so the degree of wetness wasn’t critical. (Note: on occasions when I was attempting to paint clouds, I frequently didn’t wait long enough for the soaked paper to dry sufficiently to form a nice fluffy clouds. Instead, […]
Today’s watercolor experiment: I am working on another painting of a real flower, taking my time because it is for a special occasion. However I took the opportunity today, to be carefree about my brushstrokes and my composition. Process: I wet the entire paper before I applied any pigment. I used to do this quite […]
Today’s watercolor experiment: Process: This study began as a test of some of my new brushes. I bought different sized angled brushes. I started with my 3/4″ brush loaded with peacock blue and drew a slow curve from left to right across the page. I continued my stroke even when the brush discharged all its […]
Today’s watercolor experiment: Those of you who have been following me for the past few days might be relieved to hear that today’s watercolor study is not about ladybugs or ladybirds. At least not consciously about them. I just made up a motto: “When in doubt, abstract it out.” Not very good English but it […]
Yesterday I drew a topographic map of the tonal values shown in my photograph of a ladybug (aka ladybird). I wanted to accurately portray the patterns reflected on its back. This paint-by-the-numbers technique didn’t work for me. Today’s watercolor experiment: Process: Today I did not paint by the numbers. Pencil never touched my paper. I started with […]
Today’s watercolor experiment: I have another photo of the ladybug from a few posts ago. My friend Liz told me that ladybugs are called ladybirds in England. I like that better, so that’s what I will call the subject of today’s watercolor. In some of my previous watercolors, I started the process with a […]
