Green Man pt. III - final

And the final stage of this small watercolor painting for Ruel Pascal's recent "A Moment Of..." group show. 

Click here for the previous post, Green Man pt. I.

Click here for the previous post, Green Man pt. II.  

I really enjoyed my time with this one. I hope to create a dozen or so more small watercolors like it this Fall. I've been wanting to do that for the (sadly) the last year or more but between my sketchbook projects and regular client work it's been difficult to find the time. 

It's hard to beat the feeling of productivity and momentum that comes from creating a new series of drawings VS an evening potentially blowing up in my face because my painting skills are rusty. I want to work through that but a sometimes crippling sense of my own narrow window to make drawings and ideas is hard to wager against burning through time before I arrive at show ready paintings. 

Yes, I know the real thing is I ought to just do it and work through it but when faced with the frustration of a break in productivity and momentum and at the end of the day feeling like I didn't accomplish anything to show for myself is almost too much to bear.

I'll get there, I'm sure. It's just a matter of steeling myself to the fact of feeling empty handed for an extended period of time.

Green Man pt. II

And the next stage of this small watercolor painting for Ruel Pascal's recent "A Moment Of..." group show. 

Click here for the previous post, Green Man pt. I. 

Truthfully, it's been a while since I've done a watercolor that was meant to be seen as a finished piece. Most cases, I'm working with a sort of watercolor "underpainting" with a digital finish. For my clients and projects this is the best, speediest way to go. But for a gallery show I'm obliged to stretch my traditional muscles a bit.

I'd love to move more towards traditional works again, and indeed I've been making the gradual shift back. It's slow though. 

That said, I had got a lot of enjoyment out of this little exercise. It was pretty smooth and went swiftly enough.

The basic idea was, with a brown Col-Erase pencil, get my drawing down (loose in the hair, leaves, and beard) and then paint washes directly on top. Over the years I've experimented with quite a few kinds of paper and different combinations of drawing, spray fixing, and painting and truthfully I haven't been too satisfied with any of them. In this case, and I'm trying to remember the exact kind of paper, I'm thinking it was some kind of Bristol. But I'm not sure.

After that it's just applying washes, drying, washes.

Next post, Wednesday. Final steps.