This week’s Artist Way focus is on recovering a sense of abundance. Today when I viewed Lynn Wohlers wonderful photographs on the subject of Deciduosity, I was struck by the abundance of Autumn colors she had captured during her recent visit to the east coast. I just had to get out my watercolor paints to respond.
Her images of Shu Swamp inspired me to try an abstract painting of the scene. Grabbing some student grade paper, I started by making doodles with Micron pens in the general shapes observed. The water went in with blues and pinks first, then, without thinking too hard about it, I just began laying in colors, lighter to darker: green gold, yellow ochre, quinacridone gold, and burnt umber.
The whole time I was moving like I was in a trance – I think it is because I was working more abstractly. It was a soothing and satisfying experience, and a welcome break from the pressure of finishing the dog portraits.
It’s time to share two more paintings resulting from my lessons last week with Jan Brieschke. She taught three days on how to approach abstract painting using watercolor and ink. She calls her style Fractured Light.
Last week I posted photographs of these works at the half-way point.
First is an exercise featuring iterations of a leaf. After drawing some directional lines, we traced a leaf over and over again, following the lines. I chose a red bud leaf.
Initial lines and first washFinished Painting
The next exercise was truly abstract. It involved a string, puddles of paint and two pieces of paper. The wet string is pulled vigorously through the paper sandwich.
Initial painting. This is a close-up of the section I worked further.
Finished painting. I fleshed out the design with many, many stipples. I also used a soluable graphite pencil to augment my painted lines.
This one pleases me a lot. I found myself in the flow while working on it. Somehow I knew exactly what to do, and exactly when it was finished.
So mysterious.
I’m sorely tempted to do more work in abstract style. I’d like to know if I got lucky or if I can find myself “in the flow” again.
More accurately, this is Watercolor Week. Our local art association is opening its annual art show and sale on Friday. In conjunction with this event, the association invited the judge, teaching artist Jan Brieschke, to give a three-day class.
Jan is teaching me and 10 other students how to compose and paint in the abstract style using watercolor and ink. Her work in this form of mixed media is stunning.
The first two days have been great fun. Jan is soft-spoken and low key. Her lessons on how to get an abstract composition started are inspired by four modernist painters:
We haven’t got to the Pollock yet (dripping and throwing paint at paper will be pretty darn exciting for a bunch of conservative Oklahomans!) Today I’m posting my work resulting from the first two days of class.
We started with Mondrian and geometric abstracts. Jan’s method was to have each student to suggest a shape. We then had to incorporate those suggestions into our initial drawings. Here is my work after drawing, inking the lines and painting washes.
To finish, we were asked to stipple our paintings using black Micron pens. I limited my stipples to the red circles, as you can see in this slightly wonky photograph.
The next technique involved the organic shape of a leaf. We started by making directional lines on our papers. Then we traced the leaf many times, overlapping the shapes in the direct of the lines. Color was added to the spaces made by the lines crossing. I chose to use warm colors on the leaf shapes, keeping the background in mixed shades of green.
Tomorrow I hope to finish by drawing more lines and some texture in black ink.
Our technique this morning involved soaking a string in one or two colors of paint, laying the wet string on a paper, covering the paper with another piece, and then pulling the string out while rotating it. I pulled two strings through mine, one twisted one straight. This is how it looks after the paper dried and I added a few twisty lines in a pale color of paint.
After studying the result for a while, I decided that I will crop it down, maybe like this.
Tomorrow is the last day of class. Hopefully I will finish my leaf and string paintings. And who knows what other crazy things Jan will show us using paint and ink.
Daily Fiber 