I have challenged myself to a fighting duel with watercolor for the month of May. I am excited though a bit nervous. I have been working in watercolor for at least 15 years. I have been seriously painting with soft pastel since 2000. I included a photo of a pastel portrait that I started about 6 years ago! yes that is a long time to have a painting waiting on me. It is from an Edward Curtis photo, it is definitely not my own photo. It is for myself to hang for my own enjoyment and I can’t wait to finish it. Why I am mentioning it is that I have a plan. May has been set aside to venture into watercolor solely but I figured that I might need to go back to pastel just to calm myself down. Sounds like I am projecting a lot of fear onto myself and this project, actually I am being playful and hoping to loosen up with my attitude.
As this challenge proceeds, I will be working on this portrait and I will post updates on that progress. At this point I venture to say it is at about 25% finished. We’ll see if I can get it done in May or at least in June.
My goal is to loosen up, to find my style with watercolor. As most people know who are familiar with the medium it can be very difficult because it has a mind of its own. I have always loved watercolor and I love the fact that it is unwieldy at times.
I will be including some watercolors I have painted in the past at the bottom of this post. I am not sure what my goals are other than:
- Loosen up and stop over-working a painting
- learn to know where to go with a painting, I always seem to start well but knowing how to proceed is very difficult for me.
- Find my “signature” or style, not the style of artists that I admire….a style that is solely mine!
- To loose that tightness that I have when I paint, at least a little!
- To understand the layering from light to dark
- Learn how to retain the white of the paper
- To truly learn my values with this medium
- To plein air paint more assuredly with watercolors
- I want to learn how to be proficient in depicting water
I have included this one below to illustrate my difficulty with knowing how to proceed. I get to a point that I just give up. I don’t know where to go, what to do. It alludes me! I lost my whites in the rapids and resorted to using white acrylic, not a good idea, not at all!
Here are a few more…..
Tomorrow is May 1st but I won’t be able to start until Monday. Join me on a challenge of your own design if you dare!