Let's Try This One Again

I decided to revisit the agave image with a slightly different approach. I tightened up the composition a bit, and scaled back the palette. This is still not what I am looking for, but it is moving in the right direction. Ideally, what I am after is a series of color "blobs" that are intricate and unresolved at close viewing, yet come together at a distance for a recognizable subject.

In the case of Watercolor and Me, this comes down to using bigger brushes, with less focus on detail, color accuracy. More about the stroke and the paint. That said, there are areas of this version that are satisfying, with the veiled layers of color interacting up close, and the contrast balance is good. The "whites" are actually not white paper, but veiled with a light, warm wash to reflect the tone of the afternoon.

OK, enough of this one, on to the next.

Production Notes: This is painted on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico Rough, the first time I have used this paper. I have been a die-hard fan of Arches drawing papers, but for watercolor, the Fabriano is slightly heavier, less prone to ripple after a heavy coat of paint, which I favor, and it dries faster, allowing less "downtime". I'll never abandon Arches BFK for drawing, but for watercolor...

Restart.

After 35 years I have decided to revisit painting. In particular, watercolor. The reasons are many-fold, but fundamentally it has to do with trying to get out of a rut, stop repeating many of my old work, and restart my direction.

Watercolor is challenging, and I have much to re-learn from years ago, but I am exhilarated to be on a new path, and however bumpy it may be, am looking forward to the ride.

I recently moved and where I now live boasts an abundance of succulents, agave in particular. It seemed fitting to choose one of these as my subject. Also, while I haven't abandoned figure work, or for that matter, some of the abstractions that I had been working on the past summer, I needed to have some constants in place when exploring a new medium. A neutral subject, grabbed from a snapshot, and free for exploration.

I will revisit this scene in the next version, with a simplified composition, more extended palette, and hopefully more satisfying results.

Almost Full.

I have a "half-full cup" feeling about this drawing. On the one hand, I am pleased with the way there is a semi-abstract, gestural quality to the finished piece: you know that it depicts rushing water, but the cropping and aspect ratio keep it from being recognizable as a specific vista. On the other hand, what is on paper does not match what was in my mind's eye as I was creating the drawing. I have decided to not be overly concerned with this, and continue to let the drawings "flow" and evolve, letting the marks fall as they may. OK, maybe "three-quarters full".

This drawing is a touch different from previous works in that it is multimedia. I started in the usual manner of blocking in areas of color in pastel, but then added some sprayed watercolor to increase the depth of color. There is also some fain line work added in in pen and ink, followed by heavier areas of pastel, and the highlights are pulled out using the eraser. Some of the fine squiggly highlights were achieved using an eraser stub clamped in the bit of a 1/4" drill.

The Beginning and The End.

This drawing marks a beginning of a new series that I hope to complete this summer: my first series of land-inspired "scapes". I do not want to brand them "landscapes" because they are not derived directly from visons or images of the the land or sea, but rather, are based on impressions of land, sea, and human events that intersect. I want to avoid the "horizontal view of the nice barn by the tree" type of thing and create a image that evokes an emotion derived from a place or event, and subject-free.

The recent horrible and damaging events of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico provoked me to thinking about creating images that are triggered by events in, by, and on nature, both man-made, as well as part of the natural process of the planet evolving.

POSTSCRIPT: Tentatively titled Hubbel, this was inspired by a photo taken by the Hubbel Telescope: facinating that space can be colorful and complex. This drawing took a while to reach conclusion. It is not that I had trouble with certain areas, it just, well, took longer to reach an end than I anticipated. I am not sure the reason for this, or if this is actually an "issue". Nevertheless, it is good to get this one off the easel and on to the next.

Necessity is the Mother

A while back, I needed to protect a lower area of a drawing when heavily scrubbing in black chalk on the upper area. I work in pastel, standing up, the paper mounted on a large easel, and one of the by-products of pastel is fine dust. Combined with gravity, this can be especially problematic as the dust tends to settle down on the lower portions. Dark color, black chalk in particular, is hard to remove without smearing already-drawn sections. I used paper to mask off and protect these lower sections of that drawing and when I removed the paper was struck by how the tone differed in the areas I had just drawn.

I decided to work in the use of some masking in my most recent drawing. While still abstract in the sense that I wasn't working from a subject, or preconceived plan, I noticed how it was looping back to a more recognizable shapes and forms of my figure drawings. For the time being, I am not sure what to make of this and will just let it be.

Is Horizontal Necessarily Landscape?

Long before the computer print settings of Portrait and Landscape, for vertical and horizontal respectively, modern art grappled with whether or not the orientation of an image carries a particular connotation. It is for this very reason that I often chose to work in the square format: preconceived connotation, if any, is eliminated. There will be those who look at this drawing and swear that I have done a landscape drawing, by the very nature of its horizontal aspect, as well as components that could be interpreted as earth, water, or sky.

When I began this drawing, nothing could have been farther from my mind. I was working in my current method of letting one stroke and color lead to the next. Additionally, I wanted to employ a technique that I had used in many of my figure drawings of scrubbing out the highlights with the eraser, and erasing areas so that only the barest hint of color stained the paper. Only when I finally stepped back and surveyed the result did it dawn on me that I may have drawn a landscape. For the record, it is titled Sunday Morning.

Finding the Edges

This drawing was a joy to complete, with each area coming together effortlessly. The inspiration for the palette came from the color of the water surrounding Hawaii, and in particular, Kailua Beach. I am pleased with how I found the edges of each shape, in hindsight perhaps too much so.

It was recently mentioned that I appear to be going somewhere with this series, but have not completely arrived. I sense this as well: what I am striving for is how those edges blend into and emerge from the overall color field, creating a constant, vibrating rhythm.