Today’s watercolor experiment:
I’m still on my nonrepresentational kick. Today for the first time, I used red as the dominant color, reaching to the borders of the paper. As in all my abstracts in this series (Let Watercolors Be Watercolors, About Those Watercolors, Yet Another Factor), my process was the same: 1) create a pool of water in the center of the paper; 2) create a second ring of water around the central pool; 3) add a third ring around the second; 4) infuse each pool with a color; 5) join the pools together in succession with a brush that overlaps the dry space in between.
Process:
I used peacock blue (a greenish blue) for the central blob of paint, lemon yellow for the middle ring and carmine red for the outer ring. I’ve never used carmine before, but I liked the way it looked and interacted with peacock blue on the test strip I made the other day. It is a nice dark red.
After allowing the colors to mix, I let the paper dry thoroughly. I wet the whole paper once again and floated more peacock blue in the center. I sun dried the paper and wet it for a third time. This time, I applied another single pigment, lemon yellow (in a ring around the blue). I repeated this process one more time and washed the outer area with carmine.
Red Abstract
9″x12″ 140# Cold Pressed Watercolor Block
Comment:
The colors interacted directly with each other only during the first stage of this study. Each subsequent wash consisted of a single pigment brushed into selected sections of the thoroughly wetted paper, creating a pigment layer on top of the others. I’m not sure whether the color mixing between layers added visual interest to the composition.
Without further action on my part after the final application of carmine, the middle yellow ring became much too dark. Therefore I blotted some of the overlying pigments away from the yellow ring. This led to the appearance of some sharp edges, particularly on the periphery of the orange area at the lower left of center.
I like this combination of colors and their placement on the paper. Even the muddy colors on the right side added to the composition. This imperfection interrupted the ring structure creating another visual dimension to the composition.
I would like to incorporate this technique into other watercolor work, perhaps in more representational paintings.
