Today’s watercolor experiment:

I began today’s study simply: I applied several yellowish pigments to a completely wet watercolor paper. In Kandinsky’s Concerning the Spiritual in Art, he equates forms with colors. Yellow, to use today’s example, is one of the ‘keen’ colors that is consonant with a sharp, or triangular shape.  I wanted to see what would happen if I started with yellow that had no boundaries. I began by laying down separate patches of sepia (a granular pigment), lemon and Indian yellows in an oval blob.

I was painting while the music of Thelonious Monk played in the background. The oval blob of yellow colors suggested the shape of a human head, so I applied a blue horizontal, then vertical streak that ended with a short horizontal serif. This represented the eye and nose of a face. The blue, applied over the yellow background combined to make green. Thus green represented the part of the face in shadow. I added a triangular green cheekbone with a tinge of red, on the shadow side and a red cheekbone on the unshadowed right side.

All the while Monk was playing, I worked with the facial features of my portrait.

Jazz Listening
12″x9″ 140# Cold Pressed Watercolor Block

To me, this is a portrait of someone enjoying jazz, just as I was while I was painting.