Instead of just sketching in the morning, like a flower or something, I thought about just painting things. The most prominent and important thing on my desk at 6 a.m. is my coffee cup! This is one of my favorites, too, even though it is quite chipped and so on. I’ll keep it until it dies. Now it is immortalized in a “direct watercolor” – no lines – and in a rather disproportionate manner, but here you go.
Today, Marc Taro Homes announced a 30-day direct painting challenge, and started a Facebook group dedicated to it. I’ve also been reviewing the work of an artist I admire, and who paints everything, from weird objects to seascapes to people. It made me think about watercolor painting in general. It becomes something of a sacred cow – so sacred you never experience it! So, just do it and do it and do it. Morning sketches are helpful, and so will the days of direct painting.
Outside my studio window is a small redbud tree. The leaves are heart-shaped and vary in color from pale green-yellow to a rusty red, depending on the way the light hits. This is my homage to starting direct watercoloring. I didn’t catch the transparency of the leaves this morning, but I did paint. Maybe I will paint it again tomorrow morning.
I guess I’m a hippie – you know, “flower power” and all that stuff.
The fact is, I love flowers and want to have a flower garden again. And a vegetable garden. As retirement approaches, it look more of a reality than before. And as our backyard gets cleared out, too, that will help.
So, today’s sketch is really last night’s sketch. I went out with my tablet of tan paper and took a look. Almost all green except for the lavender plant. I used ink for the initial drawing and then Derwent’s InkTense colors. Then, for the ones on the left, I just painted to see which looked better – pen and color, or just plain color.
The sky is a lot of space in this picture. Layers of blues were laid down, lightest at the horizon line behind the trees, and moving into darker shades of blue toward the top. Overlapping colors were considered, too.
It took seconds to lay down the pencil, and seconds to run the water through it. Here, I used a large mop brush with a sharp point. I turned the picture upside down, and worked from the horizon to the top of the sky. The sharp brush point allowed me to reach into to curves of the trees and around the building and chimney. As soon as that was done, I took a tissue and blotted, turning the tissue to create the idea of clouds. I had no idea what it would look like, but like I said before, the sky is the big gamble.
The clouds turned out better than I expected – cauliflower clouds,. cumulus – building up toward what now looks like a stormy sky, one ready to rain, but still with the sun somewhere to the right.
A bit of drama – and trauma! – in that upper left corner. I thought I would see how dabbing a brush on a pencil tip would work. Not a good thing. Then, while the pencil tip was damp, I drew on the paper. Another problem. I then put water in the corner and smoothed it out, and tried to blot it. Not a solution either. Giving up, I just merged in darker blues and some violet, shaping it into the upper horizon, above the clouds, ignoring the horizon for the moment. I want to shape the sky and clouds in the upper atmosphere first with water and brush.
Penstemons are simple flowers – tall, elegant, plain – with an incredibly beautiful red-orange flower. They are another one I photographed last weekend at the botanical garden. Maybe today I’ll venture out to the cactus garden to see what blossoms may be up there!
Here, I decided simply on using a brush, a stiffer one than a red sable, to focus on how the brush responds to pressure, paint, and amount of water.
Ink, Yarn & Beer 