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..

Tricks and Treats

10" x 8" watercolor on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico extra white hot press paper

TREAT:  What a treat!  I found a spot with beautiful trees, a pathway, picnic benches, and an attractive building.  I thought it would be another great opportunity to paint loosely, to capture an impression of the feel of the place without excessive detail; in sum, to try to capture the scene in the way that Frank Eber recommends.  I attack my pictures.  I do not hesitate to scrape, rub, blot, drip, etc.  I decided to eliminate the building for simplicity and eventually, by rubbing, created a fog effect that I liked. 

At this stage, it looked like the picture below.  All in all I was quite pleased.  (The board the piece is taped on, by the way, is very special.  When I bought my house years ago, a very few items of an artist had been left behind.  One, this board, is pocked with holes because of his use of tacks.  It is still covered with cardboard from those days, tacked by ancient tacks.  I understand that he used to carry this lightweight board to the Everglades to paint the Indians from life.  I feel that I am carrying on, when I use this board.)

TRICK:  I know this was just another practice piece, and that I had only spent a few hours painting it.  I didn't expect to put it anywhere but in the drawer.  But at the same time I have a secret desire for everything I do to be a masterpiece - don't you?

I have a thick skin when it comes to my art.  At this point in my life nobody could say anything that could keep me from making art.  But at the same time, I have an artist's desire to have what I do liked by someone, for heaven's sake.  So, proud of my effort, I showed this to a couple of people.  They both said it was well done.  They also agreed that it was boring - that it lacked something.  They both pointed to that foreground as needing something there.  But this is a watercolor!  Don't they understand you cannot erase or paint over watercolor?!

Or can you?

TREAT:  The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to try inserting something into the foreground.  Not for the picture. For the challenge of it!  I didn't really care about the picture too much.  If I ruined it, so what?  And that pesky truth about watercolors - that they cannot be erased?  I knew it was a lie.  That I had not been too successful at ever making it happen only made me want to try again.

How did I know it was a lie?  This is because M.E. Bailey, the master watercolorist, had told me so.  I visited his blog, here, one day in early May 2010, and found he had made a large, particularly dark, section of his watercolor disappear.   I e-mailed him to ask how this miracle had happened, and he was nice enough to e-mail me back.  I figured that my problem in the past was that I did not follow his directions carefully enough.  So I pulled out his old e-mail and followed his directions meticulously, and it worked!!  Actually I was so happy that it worked that I wanted to stop at this stage and call it done!

Paraphrased, here are M.E. Bailey's directions on how to remove darks from a watercolor:
1.  Purchase "Mr. Clean Magic Eraser" housecleaning supply - make sure it is the "ORIGINAL" (there are 4 types).
2.  Cut it into thirds.
3.  Use tape to mask off areas where you don't wish the sponge to intrude.  Very important.
3.  Wet the sponge.
4.  Wring it out until it is damp - not wet.


and..

Now I'm inserting a warning:  Here is the part where things can go really wrong - If you wipe or scrub with this sponge, you can (and probably will) rip up your paper.

5.  Mr. Bailey wrote "wipe, blot, wipe, blot etc."  But I'm telling you, don't wipe with this sponge.  Only blot with the sponge.  Then blot with a paper towel.  (He says you can wipe, presumably with the paper towel - and I'm sure if he said it, this is true, but blotting worked on this occasion for me.)  So I wonder if the directions should say "blot with the damp sponge, blot with a dry paper towel, blot with the damp sponge, blot with a dry paper towel, etc."  Be sure to keep the sponge clean with frequent rinsing.

Mr. Baily describes what is occurring:  "The sponge is actually a very fine abrasive, and slowly removes a thin layer off the paper."  He explains that small pieces of the sponge and the paper roll off as you work.  He assures that this is nothing to worry about.  Finally:

6.  Let it dry well, then paint right over it."

TRICK:  This mostly worked.  There were some very  light stains left that didn't lift, but nothing I couldn't work with.  I had scraped with the back of my brush, though, to create lines for the park bench.  The lines remained and would not leave.  So I decided to dress my characters in dark clothing.  This didn't fully conceal the lines - but you really have to look for the lines, I think, to know they are there.

TREAT:  For the figures, I used a photograph I had taken at an art festival.  They were walking the wrong way, so I reversed the image on the computer.  Both were looking the same direction - at an exhibit, at the show - and at first I drew them that way.  But then I thought it would be better to have the guy intent to get where they were going, and the gal to be distracted.  So I returned to the original photo where his face was actually facing that direction, and it worked!    I ended up throwing Eber's philosophy out the window and spending so much more time on the figures than I had on the initial sketch of the environment.  My thought was that the two figures up close would be more detailed (but not too detailed) as would be the close-up tree, which I enhanced, and everything else would be mostly lost in the fog. 

TRICK:  The dog was another story.  I had the hand in another position first .  She was holding a purse.  I had put in a dog.  The hand wasn't in the right position to hold the dog.  I almost turned the dog into a purse.  Poor dog.  In the end, I moved the hand, and the dog stayed.

I have this nagging feeling that there is still something wrong with the picture - and I can't pinpoint what.  I know some areas that I could have done better technically - but that isn't it.  If you have any ideas, I'd be interested to hear.  Or maybe I've just beaten myself over the head with this picture for too long.

Despite my love of watercolors, I also found the medium very frustrating this time around.  It seemed that every time I would lay down color, it would dry and sort of fade into whatever was below.  I colored with my son with crayons in a coloring book a day or so later, and liked that result better.  And by the end of this, I didn't want to touch anything so "traditional" for at least a short while. 

TREAT:  (The cure).  I went to the Fort Lauderdale Museum of Art recently and much of their vast collection of CoBrA art was on display. (If you don't know about the CoBrA artists, you can read about them here.)  The work of the CoBrA artists is bright, childlike, and often inexplicable.  My favorite in the collection is "Personality" by Karel Appel.  You can see it here.  (This photo does not do the painting justice).

My son Matthew, who is autistic, had drawn a picture in my sketchbook.  It has been calling for me to color it for a long time.  After wrestling with the park picture, now was the time.  I had great fun with it!  I got to play with the watercolors in all different ways, challenge myself to balance the picture's colors, and free myself from convention - in the spirit of the CoBrA artists:
 

Pencil drawing by Matthew Kent, Watercolor by me, in the large moleskine

TRICK:  For Halloween, just for you, then, is my special gift of two ghosts walking in the park...Boo!

They are history.

Swerving Along the Artistic Road

8" x 10" watercolor on Arches 140 lb. natural white cold press paper

Something is going on here, and I'll bet you're looking to me to tell you what it is.  Well I can't.

I'll bet you're thinking,  If you don't know what's happening, then I certainly don't.

That, I am sure, would be a perfectly reasonable position for you to take if I had any idea what is going on myself. But I don't.

So you, my friend, are being unreasonable.

No offense.

I do have three theories though.

Theory number 1:  I am a Groupie. I can't help it.  I am as helpless as a schoolgirl at a Justin Bieber concert.  To test this theory, I popped into a Justin Bieber fan club site, to see just what a groupie is like.  Quotes from the fans included:  "justin bieber is following me on twitter now :::::::)))))))))) supper [sic] happy" and "Sooo i was eatin [sic]at a restraunt [sic] and i had fries…and they had suger [sic] on 1 side of the tabe [sic] and salt on the other, and i didnt [sic] see the salt..so i accidently [sic] put suger [sic] on my fries soooo groooosssssss!!!!"

Okay, maybe not.

But I feel like an art groupie nonetheless.  The truth is that I go from art blog to art blog, art site to art site - some are modern, and some are traditional, some are creative, and some are skilled - and often when I see something I like, something I looooooveeee :::::::)))))))))), I worship that artist, drool a little, and want to do the very same thing.  More than that - I want to do what he or she is doing all of the time.  I want to live his or her life, step into his or her shoes, and wear his or her pants.

Okay maybe not the pants.


Case in point, the other day I was surfing and went to Chris Beck's watercolor blog, "I am Painting As Fast as I can", here, and he dedicated a post to Frank Eber, another signature member of the National Watercolor Society.  From there I sailed to Frank Eber's blog, here, and BOOM, infatuation.  I read every post in his blog.  Yes.  Every post.  Swoon.  Because I liked what I saw and maybe he said something there I could learn from so I could try what he was doing.

The above picture is my humble first effort.

One of my longest art crushes has been Celeste Bergin.  Her blog is here.  In oil she has an experimental and impressionist style that I greatly Desire.., but oil is a long way from watercolors.  And here was Frank Eber, doing en plein air in a loose impressionist style with my medium.  Sigh.

The problem with this is that some of you may recall a few short posts back my infatuation was .. well, we'll get to that in Theory no. 2.

[Note:  I do not want any of you to get the wrong impression, so perhaps my analogy for theory no. 1 should have been as follows:  I am tobacco spittin' sure bowled over by that Magnum .22 he's a shootin'.  Yeah.  That's closer.]


Theory No. 2. I am as Loose as a Goose with a Masseuse.  So here I am, under Frank Eber's spell.  In my "fine art"- type watercolors I have often spent a lot of time concentrating on details, like shape, color and light.  It has often been a slow and methodical process.  Frank Eber, however, abhors detail.  He is washy - mostly wet-on-wet.  He simplifies, focusing on shapes and values, saying we should connect the shapes to provide unity in our paintings, and instructing that values exceed color in importance, which is most certainly true.  I wish I could quote him, but I must respect his copyright and have no time to request permission, so I encourage you to visit his blog.

So with all this in mind, I grabbed a larger brush than usual, and tried to be loose, simple and free!

I am one of these people that cannot be massaged.  I am tight.  I run from masseuses.  But today, I was loose.  I couldn't find my pencil (Frank Eber at least pencils in general shapes).  So I just started applying paint to paper.  I was en plein air, sort of.  I was outside, kind of, with only my car's windshield between me and the Town of South Miami.  So I was en plein air conditioner.

I was Michael Jordan.  I was Gumby.  I was the Dali Lama.  How loose was I?   I was so loose that I lost track once or twice where I was going and what I was doing - I had to remind myself that impressionistic did not mean careless, so that the skyline ended up changing a bit.  It is a different South Miami, than South Miami.  I was Caravaggio.  A loose Caravaggio.


But, going back to theory no. 1, my infatuation just two months ago was with Andrew Wyeth,  His work is  not wet, but dry, and hardly impressionistic, but greatly detailed.  So what does that mean?!


Theory no. 3. I am thoroughly lost.  It was great fun doing this painting, and I will do more in that style I am sure even though I know it is not what I will do the most and will not be where I ultimately head.  I will do more of that just as I will do more drybrush, more ink and watercolor, and more detailed watercolors that are somewhere in between.  I am fine artist.  I am illustrator.  I admire fine artists.  I admire illustrators.  I sketch.  I draw meticulously.  I am careless.  I am detailed.  I want to learn acrylics, monoprint, perhaps oil, and who knows what else.  I like still lifes, portraits, cityscape, and everyday portrayals of people.  I admire traditional art, and more recent isms, and modern design.

So where am I?  I am everywhere!  I am nowhere.

I believe - I hope - that this is the definition of a student.  I have found my passion, and my infatuation.   I travel down many roads and one day I hope to find my road. At the start of this blog, I wrote its tag line: "Swerving along the artistic road with every sight a potential target."  When I wrote that, I was thinking of subject matter.  Without understanding, I also seem to have summed up the journey of finding artistic voice and method of expression. 

And that is where I am.  Everywhere.  Nowhere.

So something is going on here, for sure.  I hope.  And someday I hope to look back and know what.