4/8/06

Ice on the Bay


"Release your ego's desire for perfection" Danny Gregory
I am even releasing my pride by posting this for the whole world to see (don't I wish). It was a sunny day, and I could see from my windows that the ice had broken up on the Bay and the water was very blue. I painted this in the car, with my water brush, my little tiny tin of watercolors, some white gouache, in my Moleskine, and my feet were wet (that's another story - you won't have to hear it) . I am not real comfortable painting in the car. I don't like my water brush. Maybe I'm just not used to it. My tiny tin of watercolors is a little awkward - I can't tell what I'm mixing because I don't have a white mixing area. I am not at all used to working with gouache, and I'm still getting used to the Moleskine paper. But all in all, I really had a good time! I didn't come away with a great sketch, but I did come away with the satisfaction of being able to go down there by the water and spend some time doing what I love to do in the wonderful place we live in and just be a part of nature that is bigger than life. How fortunate I was to be able to record that in my way.

Sketches


I've been working on sketches - getting some compositions ready for painting. I am going through my watercolor journals, trying to refine the compositions ("refine", meaning make them OK, half-way decent) and do larger paintings of them.

I can't seem to get the lower right sketch to work out. The path leads us straight into the center of the page, to the center of the house that's in the center of the page, that's . . . .

I'm still working on it.