"You can't get lost...

when you don't know where you are going."

Those were some of the last words of advice my friend and editor Meredith Charpentier left me with.

Turned in the final revised illustrations for a book, finished teaching for the year, and finally attended to accumulating piles of paperwork.

My dance card is free. Here are some pictures I did this week. 

These are for you, Meredith.

Bob Ross Day

Following my post on gimmicks:

We spend one morning in my watercolour workshop focusing on textures and how to achieve different ones using various methods of repelling and resisting pigments, stenciling, stamping, blotting up, spraying, using dry and wet brushes of different shapes, etc.

In the afternoon, I lead everyone through a fantasy painting. There are three approaches to painting: from direct observation, using reference, and pure imagination.  The latter is the most difficult to teach and do, to my mind, so I lead everyone through various initial steps to acheive a purely invented but three dimensional landscape, acheiving a sense of space and distance using the studies we made in the morning

The paintings inevitably end up rather kitsche and are my least favourite of the week, but nevertheless serve a useful purpose and I find myself constantly referring back to this exercise the following week when we are painting  in the field.

I refer to this day of superficial effects as my Bob Ross Day. Bob Ross was an extremely successful American artist, in financial terms, who demonstrated on television shows how to paint instant art to impress your family and friends...

Gimmicks

 In my watercolour class, we spend one day studying and working on tone. I get the students to mix up a bistre, a mixture of all the primary colours to get dark browns and blacks to work with, and then I set up a  composition using old pots and kettles that I find in local flea markets.

I had ended up with some straightforward exercises that were a fairly dull, so I then jazzed them up by swashing more dark washes here and there, covering them with kitchen film wrap that I then scrunched up, and left to dry.

I am sure Morandi would turn in his grave if he knew I refered to the these exercises as Morandi Day...

Another revision

This is another still texture/edges/colour/composition still life study I painted for my class over the summer.  The upper right corner was a bit of a muddy mess, so I have just drawn in another sunflower and some foliage which has improved it, but the problem is the poor composition: the large sunflower in the middle of the picture. Always a mistake.

 I might cut the paper down and just save the artichokes and peaches which I rather like. It's important to figure out why something doesn't work before moving on.

Definitely better.

New model

 Not always easy finding models in rural areas, but we were lucky enough to find a lovely new one recently. Marjolein is of Dutch and Indonesian parentage and has elegant long limbs and a lovely golden skin. She has also modeled professionally before and falls naturally into beautiful poses.

 I am still battling to find my way in "art", but drawing and painting the human form comes closest to summoning the presence of my muse. Only when I am totally immersed in and absorbed in work, even a very simple sketch, does she allow something magical to happen and I become aware of a faint heartbeat and gentle breath emanating from my brush.