Art Every Day Month - November 29

A Tray of Gingerbread Cookies








All the activity at home this weekend has been baking, and baking gingerbread cookies, in particular. The whole house smells spicy and warm.

Baking, like painting, is a precise activity, with a certain tolerance for error, but with a critical eye for the characteristics and conditions of those errors.

I could beat myself up over accidental backflows in my watercolor washes, in the same way that I could reject a batch of cookies which got burned on the bottom.
I could do both those things, but right now, I won't.
I know I will become a better painter and a better baker, if I acknowledge my accidents and the mistakes that caused them, and watch next time so I don't make those mistakes.
I may make other mistakes, but, if I stay alert and remain aware of what I am doing, I will continue to improve.

And I will continue to enjoy what I am doing.
It's a bonus for me that other folks enjoy what I am doing, both paintings and cookies!

Art Every Day Month - November 6

Layers: Transparent Washes

Today for my "Art Every Day for the Month of November" challenge I laid down two washes of transparent color – viridian and prussian blue – with deliberate and accidental movements of paint on the paper, and with varying degrees of wetness and dry brushing.

What did I get? Lovely delicate marbled effects, abrupt patterning, and a jewel-like quality in the depth of color. See-through textures, mottled tones, and an underpainting that dissolved as the next layer went over it.

I also got a sense that however controlled I might want to be in applying it, the paint will create its own random characteristics as it dries on the paper. I just need to wait to see what it will look like.

And I needed to remind myself not to judge whether or not I like the effect until the painting has finished itself.

Art Every Day Month - November 4

Backflow

Backflow in watercolor is the result of an intrusion from one area of wet paint into another.

Backflow could create an attractive marbled effect or it could spoil a painting.

Usually backflow comes as an accident – unwanted. However, if I interfere it’s not an accident any more, it is an experiment, and in today’s painting I deliberately set up the conditions for backflow to occur.

The extent of backflow is a function of how quick I am to intervene to prevent "ruin", or how long I am prepared to wait to see what develops. Today I waited. I had to let the entire backflow effect happen on its own.

Whether I accept the random results depends on how spontaneous or how controlling I want to be, with the painting or with myself.