I normally post a sketch or watercolor every day. Yesterday’s post, however was a photograph from my archives. I miss photography, especially those days when I had a darkroom. Sometimes I would hole up for an entire weekend of developing film and making prints.  I remember taking a course in New York City at the International Center of Photography in the early 1990s. This was when the digital age was just beginning to challenge film. One of my classmates asked me what I thought of digital photography. I told him I thought it would change the way we take pictures. I wonder if you can imagine taking a picture and waiting for an entire week, or even a couple of days to see the results. Unimaginable today.

Without a proper digital camera, I am at the mercy of the visual recording device on my phone. I usually employ it to record events and special conditions that unusual light presents (see Texture post). I do miss the days of viewfinders, the ability to manually focus on a particular spot, or choose to over- or under-expose.  I suppose that is one of the reasons I am more drawn to sketching and painting (pun intended).

Today’s watercolor experiment:

Now and then I buy a watercolor magazine. Yesterday I tried my hand at imitating one of the demonstration lessons. It felt really odd copying something from a picture that I hadn’t taken. I did modify the design – if one can say there is indeed a design element in the sketch below. The point of the exercise was to work with contrasting colors: orange and blue.

Here is yesterday’s rough sketch:

Very rough…

Today I tried again, using one of my previous paintings as a model (Koi Polloi). I modified the design to a circular arrangement of fish.

Comment:

One might understand why I didn’t post my rough sketch on its own yesterday. It is rather a mess. I like today’s sketch much better. As I mentioned, this sketch is a combination of orange and blue, Red-Orange (Sennelier), Cadmium Orange and Cobalt Teal, to be exact.

The point of the magazine article was to begin with orange to trace the forms of the fish and rocks, adding muted colors layer by layer. Each progressive glaze contained more turquoise. The rocks that appear to be further away (deeper) are those that are less saturated with color (more neutralized by the blue).

If I were to repeat this exercise, I would use additional visual cues. Overlapping rock shapes would help add to the appearance of depth. Perhaps more contrast at the edges of the shapes would also help.

Even though Photoshop exists for digital visual media, I miss having the ability to adjust my photos through the viewfinder and with other camera controls as much as I can manipulate a watercolor design.