I recently attended a watercolor society meeting and someone mentioned that they liked my blog and I was embarrassed to admit I had not posted in a while. Truth be told, I’ve been in the studio working on several projects and finally hit a lull while some paintings sit prior to being soaked, restretched and reassessed. So, here goes.
I may have mentioned that I took a trip through New England and Northeast Canada late last year. The four paintings I’m posting today come from that trip. I’ve got several more underway but these are far enough along to talk about:
I posted “Peggy’s Cove” earlier, shortly after all initial washes had been completed. At this point I’m ready to soak this piece in the bath tub, restretch and fine tune to completion. The soaking process helps to settle areas of thick pigment and unify the painting. The foreground and some of the deep shadows need some work along these lines. I also need to work some of the reflections, particularly in the left middle ground and I find that the bath helps the liquid look of reflections. At this point I have set the painting aside for a few days to allow the pigments to dry and set a bit so that the bath doesn’t wash away things I want to retain. I also take this opportunity to formally critique the painting in one of my moleskin notebooks, identifying areas that need to be addressed once the restretched painting has dried enough to get back into those areas I have identified. At a full sheet, this painting is larger than I work most of the time. Most of my work is half sheet like the others featured in this post. Occasionally, I work in quarter sheet but most of that work involves studies for future projects.
This painting, “48th & Broadway“, is also ready for the bath and restretch process but is probably more resolved than the one above. As mentioned above, it’s a half sheet or 15″ X 22”. I’ve tried to distill these New York City projects to shape and color as the structure in NYC is overwhelming and, frankly, can become boring in a painting.
Case in point is “Water Towers“, Here, I was intrigued by the shapes and tonal shifts of the composition. I have done no brush work on this project, just a series of approximately six washes. A lot to be resolved from a value perspective. There will be only a splash of vivid color at the upper left where a neon sign will catch the eye.
Hopefully, the round shapes will pull the viewer into the composition towards the color. We’ll see. That’s the plan at any rate!
“Boathouse Retreat” rounds out the post. I captured this image in Concord, Mass. and wanted to capture the visual contrast, of a single figure, calmly reading, in what is a riot of color. This painting is a little further along than “Water Towers”. I’ve begun to establish my darkest darks and clean up some lines and address some values in the boathouse. As a matter of fact, just sitting here reviewing the image, I’m making a note to lift some darks in the reflection and add some color so that it reads better. A lot of work to be done, but that’s part of the fun. Although I work from photos a great deal, and try to initially set up the composition through the camera lens it is rare that the initial composition survives intact when executing a painting. Nature is chaotic and doesn’t care about composition or what I want to use as a focal point. Plus, I generally invent my own color. The foliage was not really turning in New England during my visit. The photo supporting this project features greens but that would not have communicated the chaos around the figure that I wanted to contrast against the calm of the figure sitting on the pier.
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The Art of Joe Blanford 