I just read something that really echoed with me "Watercolor – it’s NOT like riding a bike." Thank you Marc Taro Holmes for expressing exactly how I am feeling at the moment. Last summer, I felt like I could paint. And now, it's like I'm learning all over again. And struggling. Getting frustrated with it. But then I have to remind myself that it's just a hobby. Nothing to sweat over. And yet, it's a passion. You could call it an obsession. It gives me joy and pain. It makes me feel alive.
So I've been experimenting with skies. The first one on hot press paper, Bockingford 300gsm, and the second on rough paper, Arches 300gsm, in block format. Both about A3 size. I really need to start learning paper sizes, but my mind works in metric and all this imperial and inches is hard for me!!
Hot press has always been a struggle for me. The brushstrokes show too much. But then, in this climate, cold press paper tends to lead to washes that just blend into a confused meh. And this Arches paper, although it is rough, did just that - it's like I couldn't add extra strokes without them blending into oblivion. I just need to go somewhere warm. Australia, California, Portugal! Well, we'll have to wait and see how the virus situation evolves. But, really, my main difficulty right now (and always?) is that I tend to use colours that are too dark to represent clouds. Yes, it is how I see them. And yes, it is how I photograph them (often à contre jour). But it doesn't have to be how I paint them.
And rather than leaving them as sky-only experiments, I added a little bit of a half-Irish, half-abstract landscape at the bottom. Mmm. Now I prefer the hot-press one! My life is a never-ending experiment!
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