I know I once saw a sky something like the one I painted below. I scoured my photo files for evidence of that, to no avail. I’ve seen patterns of clouds at the cusp of dark. Their bottoms reflected the sun below the horizon while their tops were cool with evening colors. My abstract suggests […]
Instead of trying to recreate the infinitely fine variations of water mist against the sky (also known as ‘clouds’), today’s watercolor is an abstract inspired by clouds. The cobalt blue I used today seems much more sky-like than the French ultramarine of yesterday’s experiment. Although the color isn’t exactly like the photo, my abstract gives the impression of […]
I’m always taking pictures of clouds. I would love to be able to create on the paper, what I see in the sky. There are plenty of books and tutorials on painting cloudscapes, but so far I haven’t seen one that explains how to paint a specific one. The cloud in the photo below is […]
I began with a couple of brush strokes that formed a figure eight. I did not know what to do next except that the openings in the figure reminded me of eye-holes in a mask. I populated the holes with cadmium red and lemon yellow. The result reminded me of a dragon face. I thought […]
Just yesterday I was walking up the sidewalk to the house when I heard this buzzing sound behind me. I’ve lived here long enough to recognize it as the sound of a humming bird’s vibrating wings. I turned around to see it needling its beak into the flowers in our front yard. In the realm of music, humming […]
I’m weaning myself from small (~3″x4″) pen and ink studies for now and trying to get back to watercoloring on a larger scale. The photograph below lends itself to both watercolor and pen and ink. Its composition contains straight lines and rectangles, but also displays a wonderful harmony of colors. Perhaps the photo was not color […]
Below is an anonymous man hole cover, surrounded by interesting textures, shadows and lines. Perhaps my fascination with high-contrast, coarsely-grained comes from my nearsightedness. Before I got glasses, I could not get enough time with my toy binoculars. I would look everywhere and focused sharply on everything.
At first glance, the most recognizable feature in this picture is the trailing foot of a walking person. If one squints one’s eyes and forgets this image is a photograph, the shadows take on an abstract quality. A shadow figure emerges. My interpretation of this non-symmetrical Rorschach-ish image is: a giant quail, facing right. Remember, squint your […]
Sometimes, even if there are signposts guiding the way, things can be confusing.
I found another photo of the East Village Dragon. It is so much better than yesterday’s. My pen and ink extrapolation from that photo really missed the mark. Below is a detail of that photograph, in clear focus. The frieze, in context: My pen and ink rendition:
