Today’s watercolor experiment: Another abstract away from home: My abstract compositions always seem to begin with a color and a brushstroke. Today the color was cobalt blue. The first bright-blue brushstroke inspired a second parallel stroke of dark blue. In the final piece, we see the dark blue in the center. The dark blue, in […]
Most day’s I have a pretty good idea about what I want to draw or paint. However, more days than not, I struggle to come up with something. Today was one of those days. Today’s experiment: One of my strategies is to page through some of my art books for inspiration. I usually turn to Paul […]
Today’s watercolor experiment: I have an obsession about the past. In part, it has to do with my desire to go back in time to try and fix things. My older brother Mike has a lot to do with that. He is autistic, low functioning and nonverbal. I have never been able to communicate with […]
It worked. Distraction, I mean. Yesterday I mentioned that this was the first year I didn’t get a happy birthday call from Mom, not because she forgot to call, but because she died earlier in the year. One of my ways of dealing with sadness and bad feelings has been to compartmentalize. However, it was hard […]
Today’s watercolor experiment: I resorted to masking fluid again as the starting point for my watercolor today. It may sound silly, but I look forward to the random splashing and the moving and jerking around of the paper to impose some manner of pattern. It inspires me. Today, I wanted to see if I could coax […]
Today’s watercolor experiment: I had nothing in mind to paint today. When that happens, I get my inspiration by just getting started. Sometimes I do this by dipping my brush in a color that suits my fancy and stroking it across the paper. Perhaps the color or the shape of the stroke will inspire my next […]
Today’s watercolor experiment: Inspiration I was trying to figure out how to make visible, a dream I had last night. It was, as most dreams seem, amorphous. I remember that I was in the process of creating something. It was a medical procedure, Frankensteinian, in a way. A body lay flat on a wooden bed, another, […]
Today’s watercolor experiment: I had several different ideas for today’s study. Perhaps ‘false starts’ would be a better way to characterize the beginning of this composition. First idea: Upon close inspection of some of the ‘christmas trees’ in yesterday’s post, I was struck by the vermilion-inked razor cuts surrounded by the peacock blue that represented the tree branches. The […]
The muse must be on summer break. There’s no other way to explain the dearth of inspiration. However at times like these, I have a go-to fallback position: paint or draw my workspace. Why just sit there and strain, when I could just practice painting what I see? Today’s experiment: After thumbing through some watercolor […]
Potential muses Well, inspiration didn’t come knocking today as I hoped it would. There are some potential muses on the horizon, so to speak. Out of five avocado pits, two of them sprouted a root (one each). I kept one in water and planted the other in a small pot. Oh, and by the way, […]
