Another instant photo taken with the Instax Wide 300. More monochrome film (why don’t they just say “black and white”?). No flash, and no flash cover. Instead I judiciously placed the center of the lens – there is a circle you can use to set up your image – on the bright left corner of the couch. Here it is, straight from the camera’s whatever. This one I like.
Sewing projects – summer blouses of 100% cotton are nearly impossible to find these days. Everything has spandex. I hate buying clothes these days because of it – all it does is make me sweaty. I guess it’s time to learn how to make pants, too, because of all that crappy spandex. Or start wearing dresses.
This is another metered image from the Pentax 6×7 on Lomo 100.
I’ve been really into doing wet-in-wet watercolors this month, and think it may become a theme for the month of January. So many areas of watercolor benefit from it. Skies seem to lend themselves to it, but so do fog and reflections.
Here, a winter landscape, partly from memories of those lovely, cold afternoons in upstate New York or rural Illinois, when the clouds were low and dark, snow was on the ground, but somehow, the sun made it through, casting shadows and a bit of color on the vast swaths of white.
We were hiking up an ever-narrowing canyon. Light disappeared the further we went. Suddenly, there was this tree, bright against the shadows.
I’ve been thinking about how I am developing a sort of painting style in gouache, as well as giving thought to the painters whose work I admire. It definitely falls in the impressionistic and expressionistic varieties. Gouache just seems to be made for exuberant color and enthusiastic brushwork.
My colors are more subdued that I wanted – I wanted turquoise skies and pink flowers and a brilliant sunset. Instead, I have a rather northern European type of town scene, with a garden or flowering park in the middle. Summer’s abundance flourishes under the trees, but in the shade it seems. 
In doing this painting, I didn’t do much planning. I stuck to the prompt of “splashes of color” – and splash I did. The result was a serious loosening up of my style, and a letting go of “this is what I want it to be.” That is significant – I can be a real tight ass about painting, and in the end dislike the results. When I let go – let things splash – I am usually much, much happier with the results.
Regardless, both paintings appear muddy to me. I wonder if working with pure color – straight from the tube – would help. Practice certainly will. The flowers in the vase seem a bit overworked, too. Again, practice and experience.
So, lots of splashes of color for #WorldWatercolorMonth 2019 is producing some rather pleasing results and, more than anything, a daily involvement with painting.
Ink, Yarn & Beer 