scary stuff
Part of the plan for this holiday was that my sister and I would have some time to paint together. I do people and animals. She is a dab hand at very loose watercolour landscapes.
Problem! (for me)
Her approach is to blithely throw paint on wet watercolour paper and develop the results. It is amazing how landscapes grow out of what seems like a rather chaotic collection of colours and brush strokes. Visit her website to see some of them.
What the heck!
I gave it a try, not without asking myself a million times what on earth I was doing or hoping to achieve. I had to force myself to loosen up and not constantly look for structure. My starting point was remembering the long sweeping deserted beach we had visited the day before. I made a rough curved slash of ochre and an equally ragged wash of blue and then froze. What next? Bit by bit I added pigment, getting less panicked as I progressed. But my inner crazy person kept on demanding a blob of red. Probably because the other colours were so tonally similar and I had just got to the “what the heck” moment when it was the action of letting go that mattered, not the outcome.
I am still not sure whether this red is successful or if it just looks like I cut myself and bled on the painting. In retrospect, perhaps the crazy person got a little too enthusiastic?
Let me know what you think.
Even if it is not successful as a composition, it was successful as a confrontation – a great lesson in walking through the fear to the other side.
{ 2 comments }
