There are times when it seems all the piddly little things pile up and I spend my days doing them, like a list of a million bits of this and that. It gets depressing. It is important to do more than just tasks and chores and the to-do list. Today, after spending too much time on oil painting and working on getting myself organized, I just pulled out the gouache and some paper and played.
First around, trying a paper that I haven’t tried before. This is an inexpensive cotton paper with a decent texture for watercolors, but too much texture for gouache. I had forgotten that gouache is much better on smooth paper. I chose flowers as it is summer time.
I have yellow cosmos – a bit past their prime – in the front yard. A tall, jolly mess!
Here, echinacea. I often grow it, but this year did not. I like the way the petals fall back and the center is bright orange and black with bits of yellow. Not a good painting – too dark and messy.
Mullein is a wild plant but it has been hybridized to grow in colors such as pale yellow, lavender-pink, and whitish. It is normally a yellow flowering plant with dark centers. I have thought of growing them but so far haven’t. Maybe next summer.
And then, I moved on to a smoother paper. Here, a coastal scene with rocks and sea and clouds and a distant shoreline. Here in California the coastal fog comes and goes, making for some chilly summer days!
I like this one the best, in part because it was easier to paint on smooth paper. Gouache is such a fun medium as it is easy to use, never looks real but does, and so on and so forth.
Altogether, a nice way to spend an afternoon outdoors ignoring the list of petty crap that seems to be dominating my life these days . . . .
Ink, Yarn & Beer 