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I'm enjoying playing with watercolors without training wheels. I've never worked without putting some lines down first. Sometimes I get done and wish the composition were a little more balanced (there's no switching things around once the paint is down), but I think the energy and freshness are a good trade off. As I wrote yesterday, it's good to have these vacation spaces to experiment without feeling that a show is looming. I'm having tea on my worktable with a view of the mountains, listening to the radio, and playing with paint today. It's a good morning.
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The beautiful thing about having my main show up (and please go see it at Eclectic Eye until January 2nd if you’re in Memphis!) is that I’m now free to experiment a bit and see what new things I can try since the pressure of producing exhibitionable art on a deadline is past. Which is not to say I don’t love painting with a purpose and creating a body of work for a show. But I love do also love the freedom of vacation painting.
I’m back in Washington, as you may be able to tell from the scenery. It’s been a quiet start to vacation as I continue to soldier through a cold, but I’ve gotten to sit under a blanket and read a lot. I’m in the middle of a book on Georgia O’Keefe and Alfred Stieglitz, and it’s made me go look up her early watercolor work from the teens, which is stunning. I also looked a bit at John Marin’s watercolors. Both are free and impressionistic and do not involve the use of line. I have a couple of friends who have recently been painting first in watercolor and adding lines only later, if at all. I’ve never painted this way with watercolors, and even in my oils, I lay out the basic composition in chalk before diving in.
I’m back in Washington, as you may be able to tell from the scenery. It’s been a quiet start to vacation as I continue to soldier through a cold, but I’ve gotten to sit under a blanket and read a lot. I’m in the middle of a book on Georgia O’Keefe and Alfred Stieglitz, and it’s made me go look up her early watercolor work from the teens, which is stunning. I also looked a bit at John Marin’s watercolors. Both are free and impressionistic and do not involve the use of line. I have a couple of friends who have recently been painting first in watercolor and adding lines only later, if at all. I’ve never painted this way with watercolors, and even in my oils, I lay out the basic composition in chalk before diving in.
I've been trying to relax in my life lately and be a little bit less of a workaholic. I also think it's good for me to go through periods where I work quickly and loosely. Printmaking is so exacting that I can carry that tightnessback into my painting as well. I find that there’s a sweet spot at the center of the spectrum between too tight and being too sloppy, and what I tend to do is swing back and forth across that line, over correcting one way or the other in almost every piece. It’s the classic Goldilocks search for “just right.”
When I started watercolors, I was afraid of doing “little old lady” watercolors, and I felt that the presence of a strong line made them more sketchy and vibrant and energetic, as well as giving them a different feel from the old fashioned, very precise watercolors. I have mostly stayed with that style, though my lines have often gone from black pen to lighter inks to pencil. But O’Keefe’s simple and vibrant watercolors use no lines at all and simply sing. So after looking up that work of hers, I decided to try a few of my own. I can’t ever get as ascetic and spare and reduced as her gorgeous work. I’m simply too much of a detail painter. But it’s been freeing to use to lines and all and just play with paint. Here are the first four. It’s raining today, as it has been for most of my visit, this being Washington in the late fall. So I’m working from some photos I took on the one beautiful day I got to go out and take a gentle walk (while still fighting a cold). Perhaps if the weather breaks again and I feel better, I can do some on site painting as well.
When I started watercolors, I was afraid of doing “little old lady” watercolors, and I felt that the presence of a strong line made them more sketchy and vibrant and energetic, as well as giving them a different feel from the old fashioned, very precise watercolors. I have mostly stayed with that style, though my lines have often gone from black pen to lighter inks to pencil. But O’Keefe’s simple and vibrant watercolors use no lines at all and simply sing. So after looking up that work of hers, I decided to try a few of my own. I can’t ever get as ascetic and spare and reduced as her gorgeous work. I’m simply too much of a detail painter. But it’s been freeing to use to lines and all and just play with paint. Here are the first four. It’s raining today, as it has been for most of my visit, this being Washington in the late fall. So I’m working from some photos I took on the one beautiful day I got to go out and take a gentle walk (while still fighting a cold). Perhaps if the weather breaks again and I feel better, I can do some on site painting as well.
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My nephew was born today, the son of one of my marvelous sisters. I remembered to take a free standing watercolor pad to the hospital so I could do sketches for them, and then I did a few in my journal so I would have a record of it as well.
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I didn't manage a sketch every day, with the Crafts Fair, a month long visitor, and a show to hang, but I did seriously enjoy Inktober, where artists draw and post ink sketches all month. I have a tendency, even in my sketchbook, to go full on, full page watercolor on every page. It's hard for me to be restrained sometimes. Inktober, even though I used watercolor in a good number of the sketches, was a good reminder to get back to my pens and highlight the ink as well as the paint. I'm trying to practice that as I move into November as well. And it's fun to have more sketch and also more narrative in my work, like yesterday morning's finishing-my-tea sketch.
I've also been thinking about leaving more to the imagination because of Danny Gregory's book Everyday Matters, a memoir in graphic/sketching form. I treated myself to two books at the end of "Hang Day," when I got my Eclectic Eye show up on the walls, and this was one of them. The other was Stephen King's On Writing. I'm thinking a lot about book publishing and the process that goes into
I've also been thinking about leaving more to the imagination because of Danny Gregory's book Everyday Matters, a memoir in graphic/sketching form. I treated myself to two books at the end of "Hang Day," when I got my Eclectic Eye show up on the walls, and this was one of them. The other was Stephen King's On Writing. I'm thinking a lot about book publishing and the process that goes into
writing and publishing a book but also how you order your creative life when that's the work that you do. Both books have given me a lot to think about this week. There's a picture of my basket of tools plus books below to celebrate the end of Hang Day.
Speaking of Inktober, I didn't get all of the sketches posted since it was such a busy month. Here's a roundup of some of the ones that slipped through the cracks.
Speaking of Inktober, I didn't get all of the sketches posted since it was such a busy month. Here's a roundup of some of the ones that slipped through the cracks.
A couple with Mr. Darcy, of course, including one in the style of his summer adventures, for anyone missing those.
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It's been a busy show week here. My show got on the walls at Eclectic Eye and will be there until January 3rd, and we had a lovely opening thrown for us by the EE folks. I haven't had anyone throw me an opening where I didn't have to lug my own wine and snacks over in ages, with the one notable exception of Dixon a couple of years ago (which was such another category of exhibition that it almost doesn't count, but in an amazing sort of way). So it was a great evening. But with the framing and hanging and publicizing and tag making and all the other stuff you do around a show, I made very little art this past week. So it was marvelous to get out Saturday morning with the Memphis Urban Sketchers and just draw and see people.
I tend to get carried away and do a WHOLE WATERCOLOR PAGE most of the time in my sketchbook. I was feeling (maybe leftover from inktober) the urge to be a little more minimal and a little more line oriented this time, so I tried hard to restrain myself.
I tend to get carried away and do a WHOLE WATERCOLOR PAGE most of the time in my sketchbook. I was feeling (maybe leftover from inktober) the urge to be a little more minimal and a little more line oriented this time, so I tried hard to restrain myself.
It was a misty, drizzly morning, and it felt a lot like sketching in Paris or Washington State. I spent a lot of it under my umbrella, balancing that as I sketched, and you can see how the rain drops caught me anyway in the last sketch. I was so impressed that we had a good group of folks coming out on such a morning.
