Today’s watercolor experiment:

Today’s experiment began as a test of wet-on-wet mixing of cobalt blue with cadmium red light. I traced a clear-water arc into which I bled some cobalt blue. Along the curvature, red made its appearance. The red was much more saturated than the cobalt blue, which I painted on the far side of the red interruption.

I did not intentionally form the number 6, but that shape very plainly asserted itself. I had been thinking about blues so I surrounded the initial figure with French ultramarine. This was a very saturated color,

It was at this point that I thought of a desert island. I imbued the landscape with terra rosa along the original red patch and along the bottom round part of the shape. I used a can of compressed air to try attaining a ‘windswept’ look

Our trip back from Burbank led us right by the Pacific ocean, where all shades of blues were visible. I introduced some lines of lemon yellow concentrically amidst the French ultramarine with surrounded the island.

Desert Island
12″x6″ 140# Cold Pressed Watercolor Block

I do see another interpretation of this study. Instead of windswept paths, the traces of red could represent coronary arteries of a make-believe heart. The blue outline of the right-hand side of the ‘6’ could be the oxygen poor blood of some imaginary animal, while the blue green surround could be an infected pericardium.

I like my desert island interpretation much better.