Before I crumpled today’s experiment I drew a free form with charcoal and painted within the confines of the lines. There were features of my brother Mike (autistic, low functioning and nonverbal), but not as pronounced as in my previous posts (see Imaginary Brother – New Ideas, So Simple, and Yet…, Imaginary Hug, with Feeling, Tri-Clopean Portrait, and Self-Portrait with Imaginary Brother).

I was surprised that washing my watercolor paper under the tap left such a faint reminder of the artwork I had just done. I crumpled up the paper after soaking in in the water and set it out to dry. As with the other paintings in this series, I rubbed a piece of charcoal along the peaks of the paper to show the paper’s texture.  I left the charcoal powder on the paper instead of blowing it off. This gave a strong overlay to the weaker image that had been washed off below.

Abstract 012517
12″x9″ 140# Cold Pressed Watercolor Block

I leave it to the reader to resolve the ambiguity in this study.