Bleeding Colors

I feel better after last night’s wrong food turn, though I had to miss pottery class because my knees are still literally jellies. And so I do the next best thing: Paint ceramics. It’s been a year since I last whip up a watercolor painting. My papers are no longer as good and my amateur paint, partly dried from staying deep into the wardrobe.

So I warm up to my tools, which equates to almost an hour of getting acquainted with my brushes, figuring out the existing colors in my palette, and preparing my workstation. But after all the warm-up, I am now face to face with a blank sheet of paper, drawing circles of what would later become a mountain of earthen bowls from Joey’s studio.

I figure: If I cannot do pottery today, I will paint one. But my attempts are futile; in a few minutes I am making a mess of my sheet, dipping my brush in various hues to add to an already dirty painting. The ending: a mush of shapes and colors, some blending, some jarred by inconsistent lines and liquid drops:

Earthen Bowls

I guess the only way I can do good with pottery is through words. How disappointing!

So I move on to the next, another wash of bleeding colors that mix merge overpower each other in the little sheet. A whip of my favorite red here, another line of my darkest blue, throw in some yellows--and a tapestry of wild color combinations, coaxing together in an almost pleasant bed of pastels. I let it dry, add a few strands of darker blue greens and here's what I have:

Watching the Bay

(I guess it became like one of those paintings that is still in search of a subject.)

And after another attempt at a complete wash and a lot of remembering, I achieve my best painting for the morning:

Escape

Its absurd how in art, its all about unchaining the monster, letting it roam free and when its just about to conquer, you  rein it back to fit the form. Control, yes, I need to learn more control.

So later today I will explore more washes, merge otherwise ambivalent colors to see magic; and probably create a better painting. And tomorrow, when I feel like lifting my brush again, I will relearn opacity and try playing around with darker bleeding hues. - 3/21/2014