Maine.
Monhegan.
Island.
Sky.
Trees.
Water.
Color.
Watercolor.
Watercolor paints?
That's what I brought on vacation with me when my dad and I plunked ourselves ten miles out to sea on a one-square-mile island for four days—watercolor paints, water-soluble crayons, and a few marking tools.
In the same way that if I were going to get anywhere while on Monhegan it would have to be by foot, if I were going to paint it would have to be with watercolors.
Alrighty then.
One experiment became this card, to which I added only four teeny bits of collage once I returned home.
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| Ridiculously 3x4"; watercolor, water-soluble crayon, ink, and collage on watercolor paper abstract 2018 [gift] |
8 comments:
Amazing what you can do with lots of restrictive parameters! Sometimes I think the best art is made with our hands somehow tied...
I was grateful for my self-imposed limits, even as I grumbled and stumbled—and I DID both grumble and stumble. But, had to push into a bit of terra incognita, and there was some enlivement in that.
Even with your self-imposed limits you have pushed through and created a great little piece. Nice saturated colours. Sometimes limiting our materials gives us the freedom to push the envelope with what we have and look what you created!!
Janet, thanks so much for your vote of confidence. Getting saturated colors with the watercolors alone eluded me but I used my Neocolor II crayons with water to get some saturation and kept fiddling until I reached a measure of satisfaction. Mounting this little piece on a card let me bring color and contrast to enhance what I'd painted. I figure no experimentation goes 'wasted.'
Great card... watercolors and neocolorII crayons... the best. I am also trying watercolor in the course I am taking. Same wave length!
Carol, thanks! Glad you like the card. Fun to know that you'lre also trying watercolor.
By 'same wave length' do you mean the what-the-heck-am-I-supposed-to-DO-with-these wave length???!
LOVE this Dotty. Love the mapness of it. Little houses and small fields. And BAM! Color. Mixing, melty color. And marks. And slightly hidden (not) heart. Truly timeless ;)
Sheila, THANK YOU for your feedback and encouragement! Did you see your name in the 'labels' for this post?—you were my telementor as I limped along in my exploration of watercolor : ) Thanks for pointing out the heart, which I never once saw till now, and for picking up on the (timeless) collage. Fun that you saw mapness here—I'm guessing in the b&w part; once I was done and had posted I realized that the color parts of this piece look like a loose representation of Monhegan itself, with its little sidekick Manana.
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