For the last few months, there has been a small kid's bright pink metal briefcase filled with various art supplies sitting in my work's common area. It has the usual pencils and colored pencils, but also watercolors and pastels. (When I saw the pastels, I was quickly taken back to my childhood and my oldest sister's set. I always wanted to have my own, but never did. Indeed, I had forgotten about this art medium, and it took me a few hours to remember what they were called.)
After the most recent clean-up of the common area, I noticed the briefcase was still unclaimed, so I decided to take it home, thinking I could find a kid to whom to give it. Well, after a very busy work season, I decided to take it out this past Thursday on a much-needed day of rest. I thought I would play around with each of the mediums in there, but after a short time with the pastels, I swung over to the watercolor and have not looked back.
I spent most of Thursday just enjoying how the paint glided over the paper and how it was easy to make the color intensify or dilute. I tried my hand recreating scenes from pictures. Sometimes it worked well, like with my lighthouse. But when I tried to paint the canyon lands for my husband, I found it kept looking like Mars.
When I explained this to him, he simply nodded and said I wasn't too far off base with the comparison, since sections of Utah do look like Mars. I was reminded of how I fair better painting nature scenes I know well, those that have deeply touched my being. So I may try the canyons again, but probably not for a while.
After the below food sketches, I switched gears and did an acrylic of radishes for my farm wall. I recently added another painting of carrots to the section as well, so I'll need to show updates soon. My husband may have been joking about covering the wall with farm stand related signs and paintings, but I think it'll be a fun idea :)
I decided to get a how-to book on watercolors from the library, to help me master this craft a bit more and feel more confident in creating paintings larger than a postcard. I tend to dip my hand in lots of little things rather than becoming proficient in one area, but I'm hoping this will be one creative outlet that I can develop more. After perusing a few options, I decided to borrow "Watercolor Day By Day" by Michael Crespo. I liked the daily approach of skills to build upon as well as his more relaxed stance towards supplies a student "needs" to have to work on this craft. (Though I'm sure my kids' set is probably a bi too relaxed of a view, even for him. I'm working on that point.)
Yesterday, I was over at a friend's, who is an artist by training and trade. She let me use some of her old watercolors and scrap paper to work on the concept of value. I think that's a concept in watercolors I really like. That and negative shapes. I like how watercolor is about light: the way light plays off objects, the way it highlights certain features over others.
There is still a lot I need to learn and work on (it's only day three, after all), but I think I may have found a keeper in terms of which creative outlets I want to work on honing more.
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