Sunday, January 13, 2008

Sleepy dude and a shirt

Saw a sleepy guy on the train, he looked so cute trying to get comfortable with his floppy hoody, I couldn't resist.

The emotional cycle of this study is as follows:
Guilt -- haven't painted for a week, should do something about that.
Concept -- green shirt in a sunset, good enough!
Excitement -- first stroke of brightest green color, yeah!
Reality -- crap, I don't have time to do the details of the folds, and the sun is going out.
Despair -- this is not gonna look realistic is it? hmm, now what? another failure....
Silver Lining -- the edge of the paper was torn while taking off masking tape, but that actually made the crappy picture more interesting.

I've attended watercolor classes years ago, doing still life, and learned some techniques about how to control the wetness. But in those classes you do a painting in 2 or 3 hours, not 15 minutes, which is what I'm trying to do now. Maybe I should go back to do stills with stable lighting conditions until I get comfortable with techniques first. Then attempt faster ones with real light. Maybe.

3 comments:

verdadverde said...

watercolor is very difficult, but you did good! I like your explaination of the forces behind the piece.

Kate said...

OMG! Somebody I didn't know left me a message! Somebody other than my mom and dad is reading this! But wait, I do remember seeing some of your paintings just last week, don't remember how I found them though.... Anyway, I'm gonna go do my "somebody found my blog" dance now, and then subscribe your blog. :-D

Anonymous said...

Kate, this is Auntie Gretchen. Your paintings are so adorable, can you send your cousins pet portraits of all their dogs, it would be so sweet! Thanks dear!