All About Painting

Google Groups
Subscribe to All About Painting
Email:
Visit this group
Here is an opportunity to talk about painting and art in general. This group gives you a chance to share your ideas, comments and pictures with other folks with the very same interests. Use your e-mail to sign up as a member and come and join us.

Friday, March 13, 2009

Fall into Spring



About a month before we left on our Winter Vacation I painted what turns out to be my last watercolor of 2008.

I finished it at the end of S
eptember just before we embarked on our travels in October (see “Our Winter Trip” in my archive dated, February 21, 2009 thru March 4, 2009. I call the painting, “It Rained Some Tuesday a Week.” It is about a typical spring rainy day that puts an end to all outdoor work and play because of the torrents that have a will of their own. But, although I normally witness most of these gully washers from my window, this painting takes place from the perspective of the painter standing next to a soggy cornfield near the barn yard. The title offers up some dialogue one might overhear at the Mast Store from a hand full of farmers gathered around the old pot belly stove playing checkers.


Although done mostly in watercolor, this was a unique painting for me. When trying to decide how to depict the feel and sight of the downpour, I opted to use colored pencils. It was important that the rain fall straight down, creating a screen-like filter over the barnyard scene. My skill with a brush just wasn’t up to that kind of even, thin, straight line work. Here is a detail of the painting that shows the pencil over watercolor technique I used.

So, the end product was really a mixed media painting that combined both watercolor and mostly white and blue waxed pencil. I felt that the painting conveyed my intentions and actually came out well.

Unfortunately, the judge did not share my opinion. The painting was not selected for this year’s show.

So far my rain-soaked barnyard is also the last painting that I have finished, framed and shown in 5 months! Not much productivity for a professional artist; actually pathetic if you ask me. I could blame it on my illness and long convalescence, but that wouldn’t explain why I haven’t found my way back into the studio since I have actually become well again. So, there must be something else at work here, or should I say not at work here.

It just may be a case of losing my way temporarily or perhaps a clogged inspiration pore. I’ve been turned down by other judges and survived, so it isn’t that. I think that I’m just in a funk after being ill and experiencing a very cold few weeks of winter that doesn’t seem to want to let go its grip! All of which should go away as we get closer to the Vernal Equinox next week. Check back on March 20 and I should be back in the saddle again, I hope!

L8ter,

Wetbrusher

1 comment:

  1. Joe,
    This painting is beautiful, it brought back childhood memories.

    A.J.

    ReplyDelete