Brush strokes are sometimes guided by intellect, for example to methodically carry out a preconceived plan; sometimes, the intellect comes to bear by deciding subsequent brush strokes based on previous ones. Today’s experiment was not based on thinking. The marks I made came from emotions. The blue layer, the first one, resulted from the strongest […]
This is the completed sketch from yesterday:
The point of today’s experiment was to play with glazing, or thin layers of transparent watercolors on top of the watercolors that had already dried. The colors become modified by the layers of paint through which the light must travel to get to the viewers’ eyes. I’m sure that the light reflected from this piece, […]
Red is the predominant color in this study. Green and bluish striations connect the top and bottom layers. Blocks of yellow and red are gathered on the bottom and top (respectively) of the composition. This is an abstract construction, but I have my own idea about what it represents. What do you think?
For this layered abstract, I used ink and latex frisket. I applied the mask over some of the painted areas. Fortunately, the paint stayed in place when I removed the dried resist material. I outlined some of the latex traces with ink, since I wasn’t sure if the subsequent washes would provide enough contrast to show […]
I applied transparent glazes over my original wash of color. I don’t remember my original underpainting and the layering is now so dense that I can’t properly make it out. I used some masking fluid to preserve some of the penultimate layer. Then my trusty dip pen did its duty in tracing some of the edges of […]
I like the rendition of Dirty Blond I did for yesterday’s post. It seems to abstract the salient features of my own portrait captured from that 8mm film my dad took many years ago. Today I tried to replicate what I did yesterday, only with complimentary colors. My thinking was that the Dirty Blond image was […]
Today’s watercolor experiment: I took my own advice from yesterday and tried to combine the square, frame-like organization with a more organic (meaning smooth or natural), looser composition. I began painting today, as yesterday, with simple, flat brushstrokes. Today, I allowed the horizontal ultramarine blue and Winsor red swaths, painted at the top of the […]
Yesterday’s post was a departure from my attempt to depict the essence of a poppy field. Today I return to Paul Klee‘s Notebook (Volume 2: The Nature of Nature) for direction in establishing rhythm in my watercolor sketches. Particles: In the past few posts, I have quoted quite a bit from Klee. To recap, Klee […]
