More goofy watercolor sketches- I spotted this little critter rooting around in Florida this summer, just tightened up the sketch this week. They were acting a little furtive. Once I was standing in a street in Harris county GA in the middle of the night and an armadillo almost bumped into me. I am told they do not see well.
My journey with this particular material continues, with many bumps and potholes. I want to gain some control over this historic sketching & illustration medium, but it is not always intuitive for me. Watercolor doesn't want to get dark or saturated. Since I am used to working with india ink (super dark) and oil paint (perfectly saturated) this resistance can be frustrating. This sequence is from an in-class demonstration. A very lumpy lime.
This sheet is another classroom demonstration. Many of these are unfinished, or feature passages at different stages of completion. One of the things I try to get across is the layering of multiple applications of color. If you let your paper dry out, you can lay new color down without liquifying the color that is already there. In this still life the candlestick has the most color application. For me, the whole process has to be recalibrated whenever you change the paper you are using. Arches hot press is my favorite- its also the paper I used for all of The Boxridge Table, which was sumi ink. This paper is good for so many things...
This is also a class demo, a little more complete than most. I call this assignment "Still Life with Creatures." Basically you set up a still life and work from observation, but pepper it with a few illogically scaled animals and/or figures. It's a good illustration problem- you have the guideposts of observable subjects but you have to do some complex invention and spatial manipulation to get the non-observed elements in there. I did the hyenas from memory, so there are a few blips and distortions. I always thought hyenas were dogs, but I read Lucy Cook's "The Truth About Animals" this year, which had an entire chapter about hyenas (carnivora feliformia veverroidea hynaendae). Turns out they aren't canines, they are part of the civet family (veverroidea), and much closer to cats (carnivora feliformia felidae felis) than dogs (carnivora canidae canis familiaris). I know that's off topic but I love those latin taxonomic names.