94. Gift Bag

Today – clean up the house!  I am still trying to get things organized after the repairs and remodels, which means getting rid of junk, boxes, and putting things back into some sort of order.  It is funny how orderliness can equate with mental and emotional serenity.  This messiness seems to be spilling over into painterly messiness and disorganization and directionlessness.  The end of the school year is also to blame.  Thus, something simple, with lines, and perhaps symbolically, something that can contain something else, but is brings new and pleasant surprises – like found in a gift bag.

Freedom!

Sounds grand, doesn’t it?  It’s a heady feeling.  Instead of ending my work day at 6:30, it now ends at 4:30 for the next 2 days, then next week at 3:30, and then after that, 5 weeks off (maybe 4, I haven’t really counted) until I return to work for 2 mornings a week to do a short summer school session of ESL (English as a Second Language) before another 2 off  and then begin my last year of work.  Retirement looms closer and closer, and what is a girl to do?

Practice!

Yeah, I mean that.  Practicing for retirement means finding a meaning and a purpose and a general “raison d’etre” so that life is not a series of TV and aimlessness.  It doesn’t mean finding a second job or a new vocation, it means simply doing things which have value and meaning to me.  Volunteer work?  Maybe.  What kind?  Where?  Why?

I have all sorts of ideas about what I want to do, and this summer, with my free time, I really want to explore things.  LIke a lot of old folks free from the traces of work, travel sounds really good.  Of course, photography and painting and reading.  Exercise – going to the gym – long walks – hiking – socializing – thinking – making – sewing – painting – egads!  My head is exploding!

Lines, Shapes, Shadows

I had to take a day off from painting as my head was swirling.  This seems to happen whenever I do a lot of any one thing.  My brain feels overloaded and I need to do something to break out of it.  Then it settles down with sometimes clarity or a nagging little sense of something different, good but not completed, if that makes any sense.

Today’s focus – this morning in poor light – I decided to look at white space and dark space.  Neither results are spectacular but what I do see is shapes in this pictures.  Corners outlines, curves, straight edges.  I also like the merging and blending and granulations I see.  Other than that?

Bay Area

The “Bay Area” is the area around San Francisco Bay, and includes picturesque places such as San Francisco itself, to across the bay north and east.  It’s a mixture of urban sprawl and older neighborhoods, rich and poor.  I’ve spent time there off and on, and it is always a pleasure.  It’s very different than SoCal, let me tell you!

Direct watercolor is being done here – and proportions are a bear!  It takes time and practice to be able to render things in the correct relationship to each other.  I never learned the “pencil comparison” method – the one where you see the artist hold up his pencil toward the subject matter and then draw on the paper, and then repeat the process.  Given how disproportionate many of my direct watercolors are, I think it will be something to master this summer in my spare time.

 

 

It Gets Overwhelming

Returning to watercolor is becoming an obsession, and the more I look at the work of various watercolorists, the more I become mentally deluged with images and colors and styles and painters.  It is a seriously crazy-making experience!  Like photography, most of what I do is really not good at all – from downright awful to meh – but it also becomes rather distressing.  That’s when a break is necessary, like making chocolate gelato or going out for a hike or looking for a new pair of shoes.  Just do something different to break out of the ruts of daily life.Focusing on “direct watercolor” – painting without any preliminary drawings or value studies – is sort of what I am trying to do on a daily basis.  This is from a photo, and the study was windows and reds and buildings.  The proportions are off, and that feels like failure big time.  The colors were all the dregs on the palette, so most were muddy and not interesting, but determined not to waste paint, why not?  I also used a water brush, and that can make colors even murkier if you don’t squeeze out excess water.

Another direct watercolor painting, this time limited to a 1/2 inch flat brush for everything.  The colors are cleaner, for sure, but the contrast of light and shadow are off.  The fun part was learning that yes, you can paint with only a flat brush.

I admit, I rather like this one, because I like its brightness.  However, after I finished it, I got a good laugh over my totally unrealistic chimney (or whatever that thing is) on the top of the building in the upper right.  What dimension is that in?!

I think I am going to return to this one again, as it is from a photo I took a couple of years ago along the coast.  The bluffs are really intense.  The problem lies in rendering the ocean and beach below them – lack of depth and overworking.

This is a WIP – from a black and white photo to consider light and dark.  I am going to try to work on this one today, or the one below, which is from a macro photo of a dahlia or similar flower.   I started this one in my Friday afternoon watercolor class.

Lastly, sometimes just a quick interpretation can give a lot of satisfaction.  There is something about light-colored walls on a brilliant day, colorful flowers – here, a rambler rose – and dancing shadows.  I would like to do this one again, too, on a bigger piece of paper and a more formal and finished work.