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| Watercolor and Ink on Paper 11"x14" |
For some reason I really love doing these silly little
watercolor sketches in the evening. I have a variety of watercolor papers, many of excellent
quality. I do use these nice papers, but I also enjoy experimenting with
sketching and drawing paper. This particular drawing is done on extremely thin,
dry media sketch paper. I've been liking these thin pages because of the way the paint goes on consistently,
and the way I'm able to push the color around a bit before it dries. Putting watercolor on paper
like this has a similar feeling as painting acrylic or ink on poster board. I wanted the scene to be of winter, use the contrast of black and white to feel sparse. At the same time, I wanted to have fun, and for me that involves color. I closed my eyes and asked myself "what would give value to the scene while incorporating the white and black?" I wanted the tree to pop and stay stark. When I opened my eyes, I knew to use red for the tree and mint green for the sky. This is usually how I make color decisions in situations like this. Consciously, I wasn't sure if the red was meant to be the highlights of the snow or the slick black of a wet bough; I just went with it and figured out along the way that the red created a color mid-ground for the white to be snow and the ink to be the wet bough, accomplishing the black and white scene that wasn't really black and white.
I can’t get over how thin the paper is. I put a scrap page under this sheet so my ultra fine sharpie wouldn't bleed through to the next page. It makes me wonder about its intended purpose; the cover states it is “a light weight sketch paper suited for classroom experimentation, practice of techniques, or quick studies with any dry media.” I thought that my mother had passed on the sketch pad at some point, but when I flipped to the front of the book, I recognize some of the sketches from a still life in a college drawing class. The notebook was meant for compositional sketches of large, time consuming projects on which I would inevitably spend sleep deprived nights. My current use for this sketchbook is such a better use of paper and time.
