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| Ink and watercolor in moleskine |
Left-brain: It's a crowded room, and there are lot's of people. It's a good chance to sketch.
Right-brain: Must draw! Must draw! Pen. Pen. Where pen?! Thank God. Pen here. Draw!
Left-brain: Now who should I draw? Maybe that elderly woman. She doesn't seem to moving around too much, and she can't see me from this angle.
Right-brain: Face. What a face! Angst! Such angst! Circles. Circles. Round and round. Pen. Pen!
Left-brain: Let's see, the nose is at about a 10:00 angle, and it is about so long..
Right-brain: Sliding Pen, curves..curves! The face. Here. I feel - the line here! Ooooh!
Then, after a similar left/right collaboration when drawing a man onto the page:
Left brain: I want a whole statement. Not just two unrelated faces on a page. I think I'll draw a line to connect them - kind of like what Barbara Weeks does in her sketchbook here. Now to color the faces: I think I am beginning to get a glimmer of what Andrew Wyeth does with his skin tones. It is not just drybrush, but an initial wash plus drybrush, or perhaps multiple washes alternated with drybrush. I've got to try that. It's like when I completed the figures in this page, I applied drybrush in various places over wash, and I like the effect:
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| Ink and watercolor in moleskine |
Right Brain: Brush. Here! More here! Ooh!! Over here!
Left brain: How each layer shows through! I think I forgot as I did this where the light source was, but a successful experiment nonetheless! Now let's try it on this other page!
Back to the page with the man and the woman, and the right and left brain collaborate on applying colors to the faces. But something doesn't seem right about the background:
Right brain [viewing the painted faces on the white page background connected by a line]: Boring. Emotionless. Need Color. Color!! [Proceeds to put color all over the page recklessly, and with abandon.]
Left brain: Hmmmm. Don't like the way this one came out really. I think I'll have to post this with the white page in the back. I'm glad I scanned it.
[But left brain then shows the page to his Most Valuable Critic, an invaluable female whole brain, whose mouth says: Nah, I don't like the colors - too pastelly. I think grey would be better.]
Left brain: Why not? It'd be a neat experiment! I can see if I can use different complimentary colors over all of the different colors for many different grey tones, and if that proves too unwieldy I can just spread Paynes Grey over everything - it's semi-transparent, colors should show through to some degree for interest.
Right brain [after Payne's grey is spread over everything]: Whoa. Somber.
Left brain: It's amazing what a background will do. White didn't do this. Color didn't do this. The grey has connected them. They are family. He has done something terrible. He looks for foregiveness but she cannot forgive. What he has done is irredeemable.
Right brain: Yeah.. [Sigh]. What he said.
Where I stand today:
Left brain: Now to use a much larger pencil drawing of a woman's face to try this technique - wash first, then drybrush, then glazes perhaps, then more drybrush. A larger drawing allows room for detail. The absence of pen makes me rely entirely on painting.
[At first it looks horrible, but gradually, layer by layer it builds thanks to the intuition of the Right brain. This method is slow! But could it be working?]
The left brain is useful and the right brain is necessary, but the fingers are indispensable. Because right now, the fingers are crossed. We shall see..
"I am continuously seeking, trying out new ways. It utterly absorbs me. I am continually producing drawings, although most of them don't ever develop into anything because I get another idea of something that is better than that initial, sharp, idea." - Andrew Wyeth.
Both brains agree. Or maybe you could say that both brains are of the same mind. Hmmm. Makes you think, doesn't it?
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