After a successful morning at painting and a frustrating afternoon chasing down tiles (again), this will be a short entry that will focus on the pleasant part of the day.
During the first half of class, I worked on a third sketch of the window that will be behind the musicians in the street musicians painting. Writing that list of things I ought to do really helped even though I didn't look at the list once I was in class.
- enlarge this area of the photograph in order to help me see what's in the shop if at all possible. Tuba or hat or??? Items on the shelves? I did take an enlarged photo to class, and it wasn't the tuba. It appeared to be draped shimmery fabrics and balloons (yes, balloons!).
- make the size of the window the correct shape instead of just dividing my practice paper into sections that have no real relation to the window I'm sketching. This I didn't do. I just used the size I had.
- use the same watercolor paper I'm using for the "real" painting for the practice sketches. It made a difference! Although I didn't make the piece the correct size, I did use the "good" paper, and I'm very glad I did. The paper and water and paint reacted differently to each other.
- turn off the overhead fan! While I felt much more comfortable ceding control to the water (I knew the items seen through a window would be indistinct), but due to the fan, it dried too quickly. Even though more water can be added, it stops the rhythm of the work. Ha! There is an overhead fan at Sharon's, but it didn't appear to make much difference - possibly because of the paper.
- practice! Yes, I did, and here it is.
Hmm. Certainly isn't something that one would leap up and say "Wow!" about, but it's closer to what I want behind the musicians. Will I do another practice sketch? Probably. To me it doesn't look like shelves in a store, so I think I paint more familiar objects (teapots and mugs and tins maybe? certainly not balloons!) on the shelves. It's worth a try.
I did have time left after that sketch so I went back to the plein aire sketch of a barn/potting shed I started in Vermont.
We'll have to wait and see if this amounts to anything interesting; it's too early at this point to tell.
I love the potting shed--suggested but not delineated fully. Very painterly representation of that shed.
ReplyDeleteI find that once I write things down, they tend to stick in my head - well, it used to be that way before old-timers set in. Still works sometimes. I think that a shop with teapots, mugs and tins would be more like something you would look at while walking down the street. The shed is great! Keep up the great work. Someday I'm going to have to call you Noel-Monet Payton!
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