Sometimes visual elements align themselves and just beg to be preserved. This happened today while I was on break. The nearly-empty parking lot caught my eye. The top of the building reminded me of the sprocket holes on the edge of a roll of film. For those of you not familiar with film, it used […]
This began as a study in shading. I drew two circles, and (curved) tangents that met at two separate vanishing points. I intended these two triangular constructions to be the sources of light for each of the circles. I shaded the first circle beginning with dark on the outside gradually becoming white in the center; the other I […]
Today is another in my grid series (see Seeking Inspiration, Abstract with Grids and Circles, Harlequin Pattern). I drew two sets of intersecting lines, hiding the vertex of one of them by the unobstructed plane formed by the other. Then I divided each into a grid of rectangles, which gradually distorted into rhombus shapes. I […]
This is the third in my series of abstract sketches using checked patterns within triangular shapes. In this version, the vertices of each triangle are more acute than the previous sketches (Seeking Inspiration and Abstract with Grids and Circles). The visual planes set up by the triangles are subdivided into grids of diamond shapes instead […]
Today’s watercolor is a variation on yesterday’s. The two stalks surrounded by geometric shapes are pointed toward the green circle in this rendition; yesterday, they seemed to be shrinking away from the orb. The figures do not ‘pop’ as well in today’s study. I believe that some kind of organizing narrative could be constructed by […]
I nailed the wash today. It may not seem so from the photo of today’s composition, but there is clearly a gradual progression from the warm English yellow at the top of composition to the cool lemon yellow at the bottom. Yesterday, I made my two straight line forms cross; today, they are separated. I […]
The photo below is me as a child, but not one I took. I glommed it from an 8mm film my father must have taken, that was converted to video. Originally, I posted this in Micro Expressions. I was not sure what my expression meant, but it didn’t seem to be a happy one. I wonder […]
Today’s warmup exercise: I’m finally getting to learn the technique of at least one Master watercolorist from my book, the Tate Watercolour Manual, Lessons from the Great Masters by Tony Smibert and Joyce Townsend. The Master is Claude Lorrain, who lived in the 17th century. The example shown in the book is The Tiber from Monte Mario c.1640, which suggests rather […]
Today’s watercolor experiment: I had a couple of ideas in mind for today’s composition. First, I had been thinking about revisiting the idea of how one looks at an old fashioned contact sheet. I brought this up in a previous post (Re-Inspection of Time). For clarity, here’s my example of a contact sheet from that post: Note […]
Today’s watercolor experiment: Yesterday I briefly talked a little bit about the difference between photography and painting, the way I see it. I take some photographs as reference, intended to be used as the basis of a painting, and others as photographs. My artwork used to be exclusively photography, back in the days of film. But […]
