Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Watercolor Gourd Sketches


Gourd Sketches – w/c on 120 lb Cold Press paper

I have been pretty unlucky lately… Today I went into the dentist complaining of some tooth pain. Turns out that tooth was cracked. So three hours later I left the dentist’s office in a world of hurt after an unplanned root canal…

This being said, I was feeling pretty awful and did not have the energy to stand and paint at my easel today. So instead I sat in a chair and did some watercolors. It has been awhile since I last painted with watercolor, so I experimented with different techniques and color applications. The top gourd was my first attempt. In this one I started pretty much like I start with oil painting, applying the general local colors and developing from there. The middle gourd was the next painting completed, where I was just playing with colors and color theory. This one was based on the yellow-purple complementary palette, and then I would lay in other colors just to see how they would glaze over the previous layers. The bottom gourd was the last sketch, where I worked with glazes of pure pigment. No color mixing on the palette occurred. I started with a cad yellow in the light areas and cerulean blue in the shadow areas. The later color variations came about laying glazes of different colors, I used some viridian, pyrrol orange, with Prussian blue and quinacridone rose in the shadow.

It was a rather pleasant way to spend the afternoon after the trauma of the morning.

4 comments:

Paula Villanova said...

These are nice; sometimes it's good to shake it up a little. I went to a life drawing class today and it made me realize how beneficial that will be to my painting. I also have some watercolors that I have never used and should probably dive into those to change it up a little...hmmm...

eLIZabeth Floyd said...

Mixing things up here and there improves all methods of art making in the whole order of things...

Thanks for stopping by Paula

Karen Hargett said...

Ouch - sorry about your tooth! Nothing is worse than a toothache or the expense of an unexpected visit to the dentis!

I love these gourds - I think the last one is my favorite.

eLIZabeth Floyd said...

Thanks Karen, I like the last one as well. However all of them were fun as I did not set out with any particular goal...

And thanks for the support with the tooth. It is feeling better and hopefully it will be fixed for good!