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Boy with Chicken
Watercolor
Copyright 2011 Margaret Sloan
I met this young boy at Hidden Villa one late afternoon. He was with his family, looking at the chickens. Suddenly he scooped up one of the hens and cradled her in his arms. She didn’t seem to mind. I asked if I might take a photo of him. He nodded silently, so I snapped a few photos. I wish I knew who he was so I could give him and his folks a copy of this.
I made this painting after taking Ted Nuttall’s watercolor workshop. If you compare it to the painting of the fiddler that I finished before the workshop, I think you’ll see a lot changes and improvements. At least, I can see them.
In past paintings, I’ve worried the paint to death. I’ve tried to make every transition smooth, and ended up making everything is bland, and even, and lifeless. Ted’s workshop made me finally see that what was missing were edges (although other art teachers have preached edges to me, I evidently wasn’t ready to hear that painting gospel). When I did paint edges, they were too abrupt, unsubtle, unsophisticated.
Edges are important. They give a painting movement and life, tell the story, sing the song. Hard edges can describe a fold, a crease, or the boundary of a cast shadow. Soft edges show a rounded structure, a form shadow, or a distant horizon. Between the nounage of hard and soft edges, there is a whole visual dialect—a spectrum—of edges that make a painting speak with nuance and grace.
When I think about edges in a painting, I’m always reminded that in nature, the edges of eco-systems are the places where life is most abundant. And now, when I paint, I’ve been trying to remember that edges are ok; they are, in fact, necessary to the life of the painting. Edges are where things happen.
Face—Detail of Boy with Chicken
Feathers—Detail of Boy with Chicken
This is one of the llamas at Clove Cottages in New York State. I drew the llama here. She was painted (for a color theory class at the local community college) using a double-split color scheme, which means I used two pairs of complementary colors. Magenta and green, and blue-violet and yellow.
This is close to the palette I normally use. But I’m usually pretty disorganized, and choose colors randomly. I’ve never restricted myself to only a few pure tube colors. (I had no tube color for blue-violet, so I mixed up a big puddle of ultramarine blue and alizarin crimson. The pigments did tend to separate out, but when remixed, they made a familiar blue-violet of which I am very fond.)
Sometimes restrictions upon artwork conversely allow you more freedom. With only four colors available to my paintbrush, I first spent a lot of time playing around, figuring out how those paints would mix. Then I planned the painting—colors and temperatures of the shadows and the highlights. Only then did I start splashing on paint.
The actual painting took very little time. After so much preparation, making the picture was exhilarating. It felt like skateboarding down a steep hill; there were some bumpy spots, but mostly it was fast and furious. And I didn’t fall off once.
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The Henny Penny in this post was painted using an analogous color scheme. That is, all the hues came from the same corner of the color wheel. Transparent pyrrol orange, quinacridone red, and perylene maroon (all Daniel Smith watercolors). Not exactly analogous, but pretty close.
The analogous colors are interesting to work with. When mixed, they often increase in intensity. I used the perylene maroon, a dark value, dusky pigment to try to tone things down a bit.
The trouble with the analagous palette in watercolors is that, unless you use black paint, which I don’t, the paints will often not create as dark a value as you might need. They are inherently incapable of making a dark dark. So to make the eye dark enough, I had to mix in a touch of sap green to the violet. It made a nice dark eye. Too dark, I see now. I need to add a little highlight.
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Yesterday the last of my nieces flew north to her own home. I miss the girls terribly, and I long for the days when they were just a short hop away. Aunties get empty-nest syndrome too.
It’s been a busy holiday season, and with family visiting and holiday parties (music galore!), I’ve ignored this blog, as well as my artwork. And I have to tell you, I haven’t been sleeping well. As I’ve said here before, if I don’t draw every day, I get very twitchy.
Today I spent time easing back into work, not worrying about getting anything right I simply enjoyed the feeling of chalk spreading across the paper, and suddenly I discovered this little bird.
I’ll have one more night of winter’s rest and laziness, and then tomorrow?
Easel time!
Sometimes, you know, life makes me feel a little earth-bound. Painting helps take me away, if only in my sketchbook. Again, we have some more owls.
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The wanderings of this blog are often paths of odd connections sparked by one simple beautiful thing.
For instance, how did I decide to write about owls in my previous post?
It started with a beautiful image by Jude Hill. I love that image, and in order to internalize it, I “interpreted” her stitched image with watercolors. Since the original image is not mine, I can’t share my interpretation with you.
But while painting that image, I remembered some feathers (I think they are from a barn owl) I found in the Sierra. So I dragged them out to make a painting of them (the fluffy part—called the after feather!—was really hard to paint. Or not paint, as the case may be). While working, I suddenly remembered the barn owls I’d seen in the middle of Sili Valley and knew I had to tell you about it. And I had to draw some owls.
Now my sketchbook is filled with feathers and owls, and such moonlit dreams that I have on these dark autumn nights.
Painting and drawing and playing tunes are the things that make life real, They are what makes my life matter. These, and berry pie.
