An Experiment

12" x 16" watercolor on Arches hot press paper

Step into ze lab.  Carefully now.  

You did vash yur hands?  Und you are completely sterilized?  Gut.

Today ve are going to perform an experiment.  As vith all experiments, ve must approach ze matter szientifically, yes?

Obzerve:

Purpose:  To paint a cityscape in a loose manner [vithout detail, yes?].

Hypothesis:  That I can make a picture using a new way [to me], namely upright and wet-on-wet in parts and wet-on-dry in parts to form a scene.

Procedure:  To paint in watercolor on a 12" x 16" watercolor block [I bought ze block at a sidevalk sale for a song (It vas Edelweiss), und I had never used a vatercolor block before vhich vas fun] and to stand the block upright on my easel allowing the paint to drip with impunity. To paint some parts wet and leave other parts dry, and to build up color and value through layering.  [I'd been inshpired by un artist (now forgotten) zat I saw on a Youtube veedeo zat vould vet parts and leave other parts very dry, und combine zeese in a creative manner.]


Results:  Above.  [Vell, everything got kinda vet.  I found myself over-enthoosed und painting fast und recklessly und vith abandon - voo!hoo! - und utimately found zat leaving dry spots in ze middle of ze painting, like ze artist I had seen, didn't vork vith tall buildings.  Und I had to lay ze block flat to paint ze cars.] 

Conclusion:  Next time I try this, I need to plan a bit better and slow down some, but I am pleased with the free dripping effect.  The simplification lessons learned from Frank Eber, here, and Terry Miura, here, helped. [So ze buildings are a bit vonky, the cars vonky, everything vonky, but somehow it vorked.]

Gut, then, ve are done for the day.  Don't step on ze cat on ze vay out.

Two for the Road

5" x 9-1/2" watercolor on 140 lb. paper

Deadlines, Deadlines. The other day, Terry Miura asked at his blog, "Are you waiting till the last minute so as to set yourself up for failure and cushion your fall with the excuse, 'I just ran out of time...'?"

No! I answered.  Absolutely not!  I knew that I finally needed to complete his Cityscape Challenge.

His challenge is posted here - to paint and simplify a scene using a random street in San Francisco as a reference - and from the moment I saw the photo I was intrigued by it.  One reason for this is because Frank Eber does this kind of scene all of the time in watercolor (see his New York streets here), and his goal and Terry Miura's goal is the same:  SIMPLIFY!  And both are very successful at it.  If you visit their blogs, you too will be the beneficiary of their generously-shared knowledge.  And witness to their great art.

Of course knowing is not the same as doing and the most successful parts of this picture were where I actually paid attention and tried to follow their learned advice.  In the least successful parts I would not only forget to simplify, but would also forget what medium I was using - I was practically scrubbing the paper in parts, with watercolor!  Don't know what came over me, really.

2-5/8" x 9" (lol)

It might be that I've been working in acrylic lately (I can't wait to show you.)  Might be that I shouldn't start painting after hours of yard work.

Excuses, I know.  But I can't help myself.

I set up my paper to draw a big swath of buildings on the side, and decided, for the composition, and to humanize the picture, to place a man crossing the street on the page.  With the buildings, though, I really lost it - simplicity out the window (er, out all of the windows.)  So I sat staring at the completed piece, not really satisfied, and suddenly I saw two much better pictures were I to simply to cut the page vertically, just so.  And that's what I did. On the right is the other picture, cut from the left.  So that the first picture that you saw on the left, was on the right, and the second picture that you see on the right was on the left, capisce?

So that's about it.  No poetry, no witticisms, nothing particularly clever to say  today.  Sorry about that.  This picture left me high and dry.  And I had to meet that deadline.  If 99% is simply showing up, at least I did that.  And I left having learned a thing or two. 

'Till next time..