Here's a watercolor I worked on twice at Sydney's. It's from a photograph I took when Thelma and I went to Corea a few years ago. It's not very big........around 9X12, but now that I look at the picture of it, it looks like it could be one of my Rockport watercolors on a full sheet of paper. I like it for its cleanness. I approached it carefully, patting the paper with my little brushes. There are no mistakes to be corrected because I didn't make a single spontaneous mark. There was a hush in my mind that made me work quietly, deliberately. It's often my way of doing watercolor now.
When I painted outdoors in Rockport I was always wildly excited. My brush marks were big and sloppy, the paint often dripping all over the paper. I ignored the drips, painting the air itself over my drawing....red if the day were threatening, yellow if the sun looked like it would stay all day. On top of the color of the weather, I'd paint the blue atmosphere, covering the landcsape, ultramarine at the top, then cobalt, then cerulean. Toward the bottom I'd ad some warmth to bring the world to my feet, some warm red and raw sienna. My pencil drawing would sit on the surface of the paper, visible through the washes that created its environment like a dream, full of potential. It was my job to place it piece by piece in the new dimension I had made for it.
I was not trying to "capture" anything......a good word to describe what many new artists think they want to do. We can never steal something from the environment and put it on paper. It's a brand new thing we make.
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