testing the brush, watercolor on paper
2:42 PM: today i’m preparing for a trip and i wasn’t able to focus on painting. i was printing something for mikela to use at one of the schools on our upcoming trip. she stoppped by to pick up the printouts on her way back to the house when she noticed this little painting on watercolor paper.“i love this!” she exclaimed. “don’t do anything to it; i love it just the way it is!”
so how this series of marks happened is that i was testing out a new brush given to me as a gift by a dear santa fe friend. i wanted to see what kinds of marks it would make using w&n watercolors that come in those in little pans.
i wasn’t in painting mode, so that part of my brain that wants to make a painting was dormant. i was in oh, what a beautiful brush; let’s see what it does mode.
the resulting marks and the composition they created are, you might say scribbles. yes, but they are my scribbles. they are what my hand does when it receives the green light from my brain to create my signature marks with no representational OR abstract intention. just marks. just play.
so i placed it on a table next to 2 plein air paintings; one in oil on linen; the other gouache on paper. testing the brush jumps out at you.
it stands out. and that is precisely because of what i said in the previous paragraph. just play, as it turns out, trumps painting (you would say this with flair, as you might say: acting! when you are making fun of an actor who is too obviously acting!)
so where do we go from here?
just play.
just play, DETAIL