I am trying to lighten up my handling of watercolor. Very often my colors are far more intense than I really want. I think part of this is the result of impatience and perhaps pre-cataract surgery days. Watercolor itself lends itself to a delicacy other media lack, I think, and to not play into the wetness and what it can do perhaps defeats watercolor’s beauty.
There is something about fog and early morning that always fascinates me. The idea that a cloud is on the ground (my father’s description of fog when I was about 5) still intrigues me. After all, clouds are UP!
So, a morning along the coast. Wet, soft, blurry, and giving way to a sunny, summer day.
Here, I wet the paper, and then began putting in areas of color, beginning with the sky in the central part of the painting, and then blobbing down the foliage in the foreground and the distance. The line of the slope was separated from the horizon beyond. As things dried, I blobbed on more colors, and continued to work wet-into-wet as the paper dried. In the end, I was able to draw the trunks of the distant trees without their blurring using diluted colors of the darker tree trunks.
It’s really hard to describe how to do a painting like this. In doing these kinds of paintings I am finding it is necessary to have a sense of the composition itself – lights, darks, soft shapes, hard edges. It is also necessary to think about negative and positive space while painting, as well as the overall effect desired. I worked light to dark, and strove to keep the earliest colors as separate as possible from others. In the end, I used glazes to unify areas with color as well as worked with thick paint and a very dry brush for some detail.
140# CP Arches, 16×20. It took about 3 hours to work on, using time in between to dry the paper with a blow dryer or let the water get absorbed into the paper so softer edges could be achieved.
Of the 3 “splish splash” paintings I have done, this one is my favorite. This technique works very well for areas with a lot of foliage, but what about ocean scenes, skies, and so on? That is next on my agenda for this method.
The studio window faces east. Every morning, if possible, I am up before sunrise, coffee in hand, reading or watching something on the computer, planning my day. I turn away from these activities to watch the sunrise.
Every morning is different. At times, I am up so early the street lamp is still on. Some mornings it is a sharp light against a dark sky. Other mornings, as of late, it is softened by the fog that has covered the valley. As the sun ascends, the fog may stay or go, and the light may be soft and golden, violet, or on a clear morning, the spectrum of colors. At times, if there are clouds, they can be lit with gold and pink.
Missing a morning’s beginnings seldom happens. To me, it is always an adventure in color and light, and this in turn makes me ponder some weird thing.
I am always glad to see the dawn – to hear the first birds – to see the birds perch on the redbud outside my window, or see the crows hopping on the eaves. It is always new and different, full of potential and hope.
This morning was no different. What was different is I went into the living room to open the shutters. A flitter to my right, and through the slats of the shutter, on the fig tree, a little bird, yellowish on the breast, was popping around, limb to leaf, eating figs or bugs. On the lawn, a crow was poking and prodding for bugs. He watched my movements a bit, as did the small bird in the tree, but neither flew away.
Mornings are, for now, eternal. When I am long gone, they will continue. Savoring the dawn is a wonderful way to begin any day.
A short jaunt down the coast to meet up with my brother and his wife in from Wisconsin. We also met up with my nieces and spouses and had a wonderful time. This is the view from our hotel balcony at 6 in the morning. Not a bad thing to wake up to!
Ink, Yarn & Beer 