Today’s watercolor experiment:
It started as a sunset. I took a photograph of one of those wonderful pink, orange and dark blue cloud sunsets the other day as part of my ‘cloud bank’ series of photos. I thought I would paint a beautiful sunset today. Somehow the essence of cloudiness did not make its way into my painting. It rapidly devolved into a study of colors. For example, the interaction between orange and blue works very well in the sky but one must be very careful with these two pigments in the realm of watercolors, as they surely will turn to mud when they interact.
Burbank Abstract #3
After manipulating the orange and the blues just short of muddiness, changed tactics. I used the fan brushes I have with me, to score in some dark foreground imagery. I used the fan brushes in some earlier studies to sketch in trees. I like the way the foreground is separated from the rest of the composition. I also used the fan brush to create the swirls by twisting them against the paper.
This abstract is the consequence of changes in my vision, from its initial conception as a cloud study, modified to explore color interactions and finally, the interaction between background and foreground.
