Waterman's Pond
pastel on painted paper
I've been tied up doing portraits for the past week or more but water still sits in my head and ideas swirl around, waiting for opportunity to come out.
The strangest thing about the Watermarks project is how it coaxes things out of me that I never knew were there. My detail in portraits is realistic but I'm finding that my water projects are becoming more abstract at times. I'm exploring more shapes and colours rather than detail.
The inspiration from this piece comes from two sources. One, a section of Waterman's Pond which is very close to where I live and which I drive by every day. Its covered in ice now and with our strange winter of freezing and thawing the surface had a mix of snow and a sheen of polished ice on the surface in the early morning.
Some bracken poking up through the snow layer mixed with dirty snow from the side of the road all added to the scene.
The second form of inspiration came from a journal that I recently bought. Its almost a piece of art in its own right. Its made of Arches paper which is painted with a mix of water, ink and liquid acrylic paints forming organic patterns.I used the basic shape that was present in the painted paper and let the pastels do the work to create the stream still flowing and the sheen of the ice beyond the snowbank. Early morning light here gives an almost pastel colouring to water and snow that I find very appealing.
It seems I'm doing a lot of preliminary work parked in snowbanks in the early hours of the morning. I do get odd looks but the advantage is that its too cold for people to stop and ask what I'm doing.
6 comments:
I am so excited by what you're doing!
This work is so great. You're moving much faster than me towards the abstracted from the real and I am so jealous! :) I love the pastel over paint mix.
Do you ever draw from inside a car? I once worked out a very neat arrangement once in France when it was very windy and impossible to work plein air.
Katherine, its odd. Its as if something else takes over when I'm create some of these waterscapes - corny as that sounds!
Heaven knows where I'll end up next. The mix of media is interesting and the paint mix provides some of the inspiration. I may try something similar on a full sheet and see what happens. I just need to find some liquid acrylics first.
And yes, I sometimes draw from inside a car when weather is just really obnoxious. It depends if I can find the right view from the car. In the Waterman's Pond piece, I was parked on the edge of the road and had to get out of the car to get a decent view away from power lines and trees.
these are really developing :>) I think landscape and water abstracts more easily than portraits - it's the way we see the world sometimes in blocks of colour and light
That book looks beautiful
Simply stunning...so fresh.
I like where you are going with this.
Your work and those pages is a very strong blend.
This is so dynamic--we've almost got a fish eye view here! I like very much your granulated texture and darker tones playing off against the pale underpainting.
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