Like many of us, I am very anxious about the election. Even though I live in Canada, I’m a dual citizen, the U.S. is my country of birth and where I lived for the first fifty years of my life, and it’s where members of my family have lived, worked, and tried to contribute to society for three centuries. We voted several weeks ago by absentee ballot. I care — a lot — about what happens today, and not just for the sake of America itself.
I also realize that our lives are going to continue, no matter what the outcome is. We’re going to get up on Wednesday, and Thursday, and next week, and next month, and we’re going to have to keep going and continue trying to be our best selves. Worrying and obsessing aren’t going to help. Am I sleeping well? Not particularly. But I’m trying to exert some control over what I actually can control: my attitude, and how I fill my time. Maybe what I’m going to share here will provide a break for you from all the news today, and remind you that there’s always more breadth and depth — and color! — in each of our lives, waiting to be discovered.
Yesterday, frustrated with my fragmented focus of late, I decided to act on a goal that I’ve mentioned here — to make a concerted effort to improve my watercolor paintings. The two main problems I’ve identified are the paper in my sketchbook, and the size I’ve been working in. Both limit my ability to use a full range of watercolor techniques, and to use larger brushes and a more expressive style. Years ago, before I began keeping a sketchbook as a sort of visual diary, my watercolors were quite different. I want to get back to that, and to improve from there.
The first thing I did was to cut up some sheets of beautiful, high-quality Arches cold-press paper from my paper stock. Then I did an inventory of my paints to see what I really wanted to have in my palette and what I might want to add or switch out. There’s not much change, actually, except that I want to substitute modern equivalents for the cadmiums eventually, since they’re toxic. So is cobalt blue, but I can’t do without it, so I exercise caution. Then I used the first of the watercolor sheets to paint some test swatches.
After that, I took a hard look at the watercolor palette I’ve been using, shown at right. It’s a small, hinged-top box, 6”x 4.5”, with 24 removeable wells. It’s perfect for travel and for use with my sketchbook, but both the wells and mixing areas are quite small, which means I end up being miserly with paint. It’s just not possible to mix up a big juicy quantity of color on such a palette, and that’s a requirement for large work.
I took out my own large studio palette, as well, but decided it was old, dry, and had far too many wells. Then I remembered the big, 16” x 11” palette that I’d bought years ago for my mother and brought here when we sold the house this summer. Yes! Perfect! I cleaned it, and set it up for myself afresh. This palette also has 24 storage wells for the colors, but they hold much more, the top seals to keep the paints moist, and the mixing areas are really generous. Here it is, with a “map” of the pigments below.
Once I had done that, I felt inspired and ready to work. Isn’t it odd how sometimes all we need to do, to clear the necessary space in our heads for a new start, is to clean and organize our physical space?
I soaked a piece of that fine paper in water, sponged it lightly, taped it to my work table, and began a painting of a view from our walk at the Morgan Arboretum a week ago. I had studied the reference photos and made some planning decisions about the colors, the shadows and light, and various technical issues I knew I’d be facing — in particular, how to show small bits of light on the leaves and twigs, falling through trees and foliage which were in deep shade - preserving or creating small light areas is a perpetual problem in watercolor. Several hours later, I had this painting in front of me:
At 7” x 10.5”, this is still too small, but it was large enough to reinforce my instinct about using good paper. The strong, medium-toothed, Arches paper responded wonderfully, giving vibrant clear color and depth in the shadows, standing up to soaking and wet washes, and holding as much detail as necessary. It allowed for pigment removal, re-soaking and re-working, dry brush scumbling, and scratching with knives and other tools.
It was a good experiment, and a good starting place for new explorations. Best of all, I hadn’t thought about anything else while I was working on it.
Singers need to sing, dancers need to dance, poets and writers need to write, artists need to paint and draw — and we need to do this on a regular basis, with focus and concentration. It’s so easy to let life intervene, and of course, sometimes it has to. But when we’re able to maintain a practice, day after day, week after week, then we can make progress, even if it’s in very small increments.
Our practice is a big part of what sustains us, through the good times in life and the difficult ones. And our practice is what helps us sustain others, whether through our creative work or just by being better balanced and more fulfilled human beings. Sometimes we need to jump-start our practice, and sometimes we need to do a housecleaning, or to take stock and rethink what we’re doing and how we’re doing it. That comes with this territory.
But we can’t let ourselves be de-railed by negativity or the endless opportunities for distraction, even as our hearts are filled with strong emotions from outrage to anxiety to compassion and grief. Today, I’ll work on some more art, and I’ll also play my flute for half an hour, and do some cooking. Over the weekend, I made bread for the first time in a long while. Winter’s coming. We need sustenance in all its forms.
Comments