Direct Watercolor: Report on Week Three

A thicket with fence and steel planters. The city must have put these planters at the entrance to the railroad bike path -- I really like the rusty surfaces -- but they immediately became blank canvases for graffiti. Still, I like this little wild area with its vines and varied textures. 

This week I did four more sketches/paintings of the area around the tracks. I really think I'm done, unless something else calls out loudly to me to be painted -- the lack of interest I felt in the final painting told me everything I needed to know. I've learned quite a bit doing these. The greatest lesson is that while these could be illustrations for a project about life near the tracks, I need to be working on subjects that truly inspire me, sketching in a sketchbook, but painting on sheets of paper where I've got more room, more freedom, and no dividing line for the spread! On the technical side, I've discovered dagger brushes, which are extremely versatile and useful, doing the work of several other brushes of conventional shape. For me, they don't replace a pointed sable brush completely, but almost. And I've been satisfied with the palette of colors (currently 17) I'm using. I may add a lighter, brighter yellow, perhaps Lemon Yellow, and possibly a couple of additional earth tones such as Raw Sienna/Venetian Yellow Earth, and Transparent Red Oxide/Italian Burnt Sienna, and delete Indanthrone Blue. The foundational grey tones, both warm and cool, created by mixing Burnt Sienna or Quinacridone Burnt Orange with French Ultramarine Blue have made things a whole lot easier, and improved both the speed of sketching, and the color on the paper.

So here are the rest of this week's pages. 

An alley near the studio. Residential buildings from two parallel streets back up onto the same alley. Some have limited or no vehicle access; children play here, and sometimes the neighbors create collective gardens that lead to a city designation of a "ruelle vert" or "green alley."

Vetch, picked along the tracks. Part of the challenge of these direct watercolors, in addition to drawing with the brush only, is to paint fast and avoid fussing over any sections. 

And a detail.

How my sketchbook pages start. This is pretty much the same as the way I'd start an oil painting, except with oil I'd build up the values next, and in watercolor I use a series of washes, usually working light-to-dark. The brush drawing was done with one of my new Rosemary & Co. dagger brushes -- they're excellent! But painting didn't go too well today. I'm tired from singing all day yesterday, plus running a meeting, and my heart wasn't really in it. That's a recipe for lackluster work. I don't know if I can rescue it tomorrow or not. Should have left it like this! 

The tracks, looking east, in a photo that's too dark but shows the lack of unification of the two sides of the work: this is the less-than-stellar finish of the previous day's sketch. My studio is in the brick building at right. The blue bird cutout is art someone put on the fence. 

I like some of the other pages from this week, but I think they lead me toward other subjects. We'll see! It has been well worth the effort to do these.

Comments

[Natalie]

Beautful luminosity, depth and liveliness in the second one down but they're all interesting, truly giving a sense of what the area feels and looks like. Unusual and intriguing place to have a studio. Do you hear the sound of trains when you're at work inside? I would quite like that.

[Roderick Robinson]

The fact is - and with the best will in the world - we may ignore your comments until afterwards and treat these paintings, and evolutions of paintings, as any other form of the plastic arts. "Things" that have sprung upon us unbidden. For me (and you must remember my opinion in this field is almost valueless) the only backward step is in the final pairing; the "completion" (ie, the rail track and, especially the two buildings) is quite ordinary, almost dismissed, untouched by the abilities you've shown before. But the left-hand side, with the exception of the blue bird, is genuinely something I would like to own; I admire the way the spiny growths (lower left) endow what is otherwise a mini-landscape with an almost aggressive vigour, an affirmation that growing things grow and have life. That you can suggest this process.

Somewhat reluctantly I read your comments and discover the reasons why. Your reasons and the end-product seem to correspond but I find no pleasure in this. You talk about things that inspire you and clearly there are things that don't. In my own far less professional world I have just emerged from a year when my novel was at a standstill, in the midst of a scene which had demanded real imagination (warring factions in a commercial negotiation) yet which I seemed unable to complete. Writing which had been my personal bolt-hole for the whole of my life seemed walled up against me. After a dozen abortive single-sentence stabs, each leaving me playing solitaire on the computer, something finally clicked. Now I'm halfway through a scene which lives (if only for me) and which even has comic potential. I guess that one of your skills is to pass through such moments of discouragement far more quickly.

Painting and writing fiction surely have this in common: we do not set out to record but to transmute. To personalise a static phenomenon or bits and pieces from past experience. But we must want to do this, if the urge to transmute is not there nothing happens. But for purely sentimental reasons - and clearly the reaction of an abject novice - I wish your tiredness had arrived from another source.

[Beth]

Thanks, Natalie. That one is my favorite too, but none of these have the freedom of my better watercolors.

Yes, we do hear the trains, but not loudly, and I barely pay any attention to them after ten years in this place. When we're in the back parking lot, near the tracks, of course we see and hear them right next to us, and that's fun. They're all freight trains, and these lines run straight across Canada.

Robbie, thanks for your kind words. Your musings about the differences between writing and painting intrigue me. I too experience "writer's block" with the result that projects get abandoned, sometimes for ever. But for some reason I manage to keep going on artwork. I used to get hopelessly discouraged with oil painting when it didn't go well, but persistent "showing up" seemed to pay off. Art always contains a kind of experimental quality anyway, and the more you do, the more you see that the failures are just steps on the path -- you have to just keep going and making, and eventually you realize you've learned something and made progress, or even a leap. Does that sound like singing? I hope so because I think there are parallels! As for your final comment, I don't usually get tired from singing itself, I love it too much and find it too exhilarating and absorbing for that! What tires me out is being on my feet for an entire day, which now includes my 4-5 miles of daily walking. I get physically tired - legs, feet, and back. And there have been some emotionally draining weeks, with the funerals of close friends. Today is the latest one -- but we're singing the Mozart Coronation Mass for him, so that is full of joy, and I'm looking forward to making my small contribution to the service, the celebration and mourning. So don't worry that my apathy about making a dull painting of a rather dull scene indicates apathy or fatigue with music -- that is never going to be the case!