Today’s watercolor experiment: Based on my variegated-wash warmup today, I decided to try one on a larger scale. I also experimented with different pigments. I used cerulean blue (from Daniel Smith) as the first wash. After opening the new tube of this pigment, I was confronted with a honey-like discharge, with very little pigment. I […]
Today’s warmup exercise: Working with the same colors and previous warmup exercises (Scales, Limber Session), namely yellow ochre, cadmium red light, cobalt blue and the gray resulting from mixing the red and the blue. I tried variegated (meaning, ‘a variety of colors) washes today. The lesson I followed in the Tate Watercolour Manual, Lessons from the […]
Today’s warmup exercise: Graded washes have a real application in watercolors. Today I practiced with the ‘gray’ mixture I concocted in my first (published) warmup exercise (Scales). Instead of gray, it is purplish. After I painted the first graded wash (that deposits more pigment at the top of the picture) in the small sections of […]
Today’s watercolor experiment: I started today’s experiment with an idea to execute a circular watercolor wash. However, I could not control both the curvature and the flow of pigment from the brush, at the same time. The initial brush stroke was resulting from a relatively dry brush. I executed several disconnected curves with ultramarine blue […]
Today’s watercolor warmup: Today, washes were on the agenda as per the Tate Watercolour Manual, Lessons from the Great Masters by Tony Smibert and Joyce Townsend. The lessons in this book are supposed to lead the reader/practicer to learn techniques of the masters. I am very much looking forward to that. Here is my chart of washes: In the […]
Today’s watercolor experiment: I began with a dry brush stroke of indanthrone blue with a stiff-bristle brush. I zigged and zagged. Graded washes were on my mind from my warm-up activities (see Limber Session, also from today). I used cadmium orange to fill in the space between the upper zigs, a darker orange at the […]
Todays other watercolor experiment: After my watercolor warmup today, see Scales post, I wanted to do something creative. I used a stiff-bristle brush to paint a quick, angular, dry brush stroke that I usually use to represent an eyebrow and nose of a face. I used Hooker’s green. As I had some cobalt blue at […]
I haven’t played the violin in many years, but I remember playing scales. Scales and arpeggios are the basic building blocks of music, that is, music with which I am familiar, anyway. I hope to play again some day, but I know that I will have to start from scratch, trying to play each note […]
Most day’s I have a pretty good idea about what I want to draw or paint. However, more days than not, I struggle to come up with something. Today was one of those days. Today’s experiment: One of my strategies is to page through some of my art books for inspiration. I usually turn to Paul […]
There are few lighting conditions better than diffuse light, to a photographer. Below are a couple of photos that I took in the late 1980s in Albany, New York. I was inspired to take the first photograph by the bright reflections from the water, on the underside of the cement bridge supports. The ambient light illuminating […]
