Today’s watercolor experiment: 

As unbelievable as it seems, sometimes my photographs are sub par. I know! Hard to believe. However even though the reference photograph for today’s watercolor is a bit hard to read, it inspired an interesting watercolor.

I reversed the order of my images in today’s post, beginning with the reference photograph.

St. Mark’s Graffiti – Reference Photo

It is a busy photograph, with a hard-to-decipher grayish blob in the foreground. I had to look at it for several minutes to realize it was a plastic-covered table and a swivel chair draped with some sort of material. The mass of posters merge to form a collage, barely distinguishable from the person walking in front of it. The only distinct images are the two stylized posters at the top of the composition depicting the female form.

The photograph depicts a homogeneous visual cacophony. I choose a different emphasis in my watercolor.

St. Mark’s Graffiti
6″x4″ 140# Mixed Media Paper

I chose a reddish color for the bricks and silver ink for the graffitied security gate. I pruned back the mass of posters. Perhaps a more accurate demonstration of the layers of posters would be possible in a larger-format sketch, but I wanted to simplify the scene. The walking figure still merges with the background posters. I haven’t eliminated all ambiguity, it seems.