I recently went on a gallery walk, and as it would happen the sum of all the galleries visited had an interesting affect on me. There were various landscape paintings; from the simple and elegant landscapes of Bob Sinclair at the Scott Gallery, to the sweet and chunky landscapes of Catherine McAvity at the Agnes Bugera Gallery, and finally the vibrant and bold water series of David Alexander at the Peter Robertson Gallery.
I took some ideas from what I had seen back with me to the studio. I wanted to try putting down free and brightly coloured shapes borrowed loosely from landscapes in watercolour and see where it went from there. I stretched what I thought was watercolour paper on to board. Once I got the paper wet I realized quickly that it was not watercolour paper at all. It started to pill, so I carefully finished stretching, trying not to use any more water and little handling of the paper. Once it dried it didn't seem so bad so I thought I'd at least use it as a test. I applied broad areas of watercolour, but once again as soon as the water touched the paper the surface started to fall apart. Frustrated I went home. On my return trip to the studio a few days later I discover the dried paper didn't seem as horrible as it had when I left it. Rather than attempt more watercolour I decided to work over top in pastel. Here's a little sampling of what happened-
I was pleased that it was successfully salvaged, especially considering I had thought of the piece only as a test that would most likely be thrown out. I wasn't especially happy with the path. It seemed problematic wedged in the corner and slightly cheesy. I had thought of reworking it but decided I didn't want to get too fussy, so instead I cropped the original image into two separate images.
One here -
And the second here (on the board on the easel)-
I'm still a little unsure of this second one, which is why the cropping paper is at the bottom. I'm still trying to decide....
Encouraged by this start and armed with actual watercolour paper I made my second attempt. I stretched the paper and did a loose and bright watercolour wash. Here's what it looked like -
I came back a day later and worked over top in pastel. I'm quite pleased with the results -
A detail -
Somehow with all this bright loosey goosey drawing has the studio feeling full of spring fever.
PS - click on the above pictures to see them nice and BIG.
