Today’s watercolor experiment:

Sometimes I wish I painted with oils or acrylic. An ‘action’ painting loses a bit in the translation with watercolors.  Today I loaded a brush with red and drew a vigorous outline of a face – the final portrait of my brother Mike, for a while. Those of you unfamiliar with my blog should know that Mike is my older autistic brother who is nonverbal and low functioning. I used another brush loaded with blue I to dash the other side of the face onto the paper.  Watercolors are wet by definition. They have a mind of their own after they are on the paper.  I kept the colors relatively dry, so they didn’t change that much. I would have loved to layer more and more paint on the paper but did not want to end up with a muddy mess. Carefully adding layers in the manner of a watercolor artist, with transparent glazes is not exactly the same as action painting, so I just left the colors as they were.

Fauve Portrait
12″x9″ 140# Cold Pressed Watercolor Block

I meant this portrait to look rough, off center and spontaneous: the manner in which I painted it. I added the pencil sketch marks after the watercolors dried.