My watercolor wash (More: No Power) was the first stage in an experiment I performed in my mind’s eye (not exactly a Gedanken experiment ala Einstein). The idea was to float a neutral color on top of a colored field and set up a dissonance between foreground and background. Hans Hofmann’s paintings were chock full of […]
I began with planes of blues and iron oxide red, with an earth tone swirld thrown in for good measure. I didn’t like the way these rectangles lay on the paper. I over painted them, beginning with the blues, and dripped drops of the iron oxide as they were still wet. I painted over the […]
I began with a pale blue egg shape in the center of the page. I did this because I wanted this portion of my circle to look far away. Pale blue appears to be associated with distant background (i.e., in landscapes, blue recedes into the distance). Hans Hofmann formulated his push/pull theory, positing that adjacent colors have […]
Today’s watercolor experiment: In keeping with my quest to change the way I begin my watercolor sketches, today I started with dry paper and a 2″ brush loaded with Prussian blue. I swept across the paper twice horizontally at the top and bottom (to form 4″ swaths) and once vertically on each side to form a 2″-wide […]
I’ve been thinking a lot about how my paint (Creative Process, How Does One Create?). In my quest to be able to paint my own feelings, I have looked at the work of Joan Miró (and his use of icons), Paul Klee (and his theories about the creative process) and Hans Hofmann (and his ‘push pull’ theory […]
Today’s experiment: I had an idea in mind as I started today’s watercolor: Yin and Yang. My plan was to wet the entire paper, lay in a blue wash shaped like a comma (similar to the orange shapes of yesterday’s study) and somehow add an orange comma adjacent to the blue one. Since orange and blue […]
I’m taking a break from family portraits (see Once More with Feeling, Family, Holding Hand). Although I’m not one to forego repetition, now and then a change of pace is welcome. Today’s experiment: I mentioned in another post that I like to go on the porch and read in the morning. There is a big […]
Emotional reception There are many works of art that evoke emotion in me. Oddly enough for me as a visual artist, the medium that tugs at my emotions the most is music. Of the factors responsible for this, the strongest seems to be memory. I cannot discount associations from my childhood, which was filled with music; the […]
This is a followup from yesterday’s attempt to portray the space I felt, and still feel today when I see the trees back east during the time of late fall and the onset of winter, when there are no leaves. I encountered this space when I used to visit Michael, my older autistic brother. I […]
I grew up on the east coast. This morning, on the beautiful west coast, with its ever-sunny days, I began to think of the days back east. Mainly I thought of the time between colorful autumn and winter, when all the leaves are gone. That’s me, not a glass-half-empty kind of guy, but rather a what-glass? […]
