Ok this is something. This is something.
It’s a bit early yet at Day Five – but this might be my favorite of the year. We shall see!
Whenever we are in the area (which, I have no idea when that will be again), we make it a point to go to Death Valley. It’s really quite a fantastic place. This isn’t exactly the best view of the park – but it’s the kind of desert painting that I love. The strange desolation, decorated with dried skeletons of plants.
This is the inspirational oil, Pull Over Anywhere and Make Art which was painted from a ditch on the side of the road half way between Laguna Beach and Joshua Tree.
Again – I’m not really trying to duplicate the oil – but to make a watercolor with a similar spirit.
I started this watercolor with a grey blue sky that washed down into a cool sandy color.
This is breaking my own rule – intentionally creating an under-tone! That’s not alla-prima!
But – Always be Breaking Rules is a personal motto. And motto’s trump rules, so it’s ok.
I know the whole thing about the desert is the heat. But if you’ve ever been in Death Valley, it’s freezing at night – and especially when you get up for your wife’s early morning photo expeditions.
This Blue-to-French Grey undertint created a magical ‘desert nocturne’ which I was able to use through the entire painting. There really is something to putting down an under-wash and painting over it (when it’s dry). This is as opposed to the purely Direct Watercolor method of working into the white paper. So – there we go, rule breaking.
This one would more honestly be be wet-on-dry, or Tea Milk Honey as I used to say quite a bit, rather than a pure Direct Watercolor, which would be alla prima.
I think I said something before about how I don’t really care for delicate transparent watercolors. But – every once in a while you come up with something that is quite amazing, and you have to admit – subtle isn’t always ‘weak’.
It’s possible that I say these things because I don’t really know any better.
Transparency – who cares! I like my aggressive drippy water experiments! Go bold or go home!
But then, when you get ahold of some new skills – like mixing more subtle greys, and pre-mixing enough pigment to pour the whole sheet (things I would never do in the past, when I was working in the field with a 3×5″ travel kit) – then you might find yourself changing your mind about things.
This is the heart of this painting for me. The ghosts of some desiccated bushes. If you’ve ever been out there in the desert, you’ve seen them too.
And here is a weird mushroom rock.
So that was Day Five!
Thanks for following this year’s #30x30DirectWatercolor. It’s already going places I did not expect.
~marc