Friday, September 19, 2014

A little left of center...

I interrupted my painting this morning to bake some brownies for a dinner that we are going to tomorrow night. (I'll probably be blogging about the painting at a later time.)

I guess I was in a very strange 'creative' mood, but this is what happened... I added the oil, then the water and lastly the two eggs... VOILA!  It was looking at me and smiling.

Cheers, everyone...

Who knew I would be making art in the kitchen?

Friday, September 12, 2014

Learning that lesson

Okay, okay, I heard some comments after my last post about things not working out. What I thought was just a throw-away, some of you liked! Thank you...

So, here is another one of those 'play day' paintings. This one was painted while the other one was drying. I was doing basically the same thing, using fall colors and only a big brush. The paper was not quite as wet with this one.

This is as much as I accomplished in class. It has that 'leaf/branch' look about it. My teacher and classmates liked this one better and suggested that I connect the areas of color with some thicker, dark branches. So I brought it home to play some more. Remember, it's only paper...



That dark bluish blob in the upper left corner was a bit overwhelming. I tried to make it more branchlike and then cropped some of it off. Well, it is autumn color...and I'll keep looking at it for awhile. I have not signed it, but at least I haven't washed it off...yet!

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

It doesn't always work out...

Last week I subbed again in the watercolor class. I was in between projects - didn't have anything that I was working on. I had thought that I might begin something for an exhibit that is coming up in October called "Autumn Colors." Then I found out that watercolor was excluded from that show. (I had forgotten that.)

I decided just to have a 'play day'...to play with autumn colors and see what might happen. It's fun when I let myself experiment - really let go of the need to create 'the' masterpiece.

I was thinking of autumn leaves...what else when you think of autumn colors? So, here's my process. I got out a sheet of watercolor paper and a pencil. I began drawing some oak leaves. I love their shapes. When I thought I had enough leaves, I wet the paper and began brushing around some reds, golds, greens and even threw in a bit of blue (thinking sky...) I wanted to use only one big brush for the entire painting.

Interestingly to me, the pencil marks were there and completely ignored as I applied color. I was so involved in play that I did not use them at all. The paper was very wet at this point so I set it aside to dry a bit. My instructor saw it at this point and said, "You're not afraid to try anything." I think that was a nice way of saying, "That's pretty awful, but good for you for trying something new."

Unfortunately, I forgot to take a photo of it at this stage. When I went back to it later, I needed a way to draw all the areas of color together. I randomly put in some arcs of color using the tip of same big brush I had used earlier. The freedom was really fun.

The end product is a little 'muddy' in places and I am not sure exactly how it goes...I painted it with the blue at the top. I think I like it better at the bottom...hmmm, not sure. It's not something that I would sign and frame, but it was freeing and fun.

When I got home I experimented with it some more - really messed it up and ended up washing it all off! The freedom comes from one of my teacher's voices in my head that says..."It's only paper!" 

It's very OK, it doesn't always work out...