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Thursday, September 24, 2009

Lilies on the Rocks

Lilies on the Rocks, watercolor, 9x16", NFS
Private collection of Rep. Mac Gipson, Montgomery, AL

This is a piece that I recently finished amid a few additional commission works. The Charleston House Gallery will be displaying this piece in preparation for an exhibition of J. Sidney Kelly works tonight. As I have mentioned in previous posts, I am fascinated with patterns and fabric design. I attribute this fixation partly to my wife who make awesome purses and purse accessories, using a large collection of patterned fabrics. I never know what she'll be putting together on any given day.
In doing this particular piece I drew the initial wall pattern on grid paper and used transfer paper to trace it to the watercolor paper. After doing all this, I realized that I had wasted all my time. The thought hit me that I could have transferred the original drawing to a linoleum block and carefully cut-out the design. Then I could have used masking fluid to stamp the design over the entire background, allowing me to apply a wash to the background without painting in the areas of the motifs. Once the wash had dried I could have gone back and removed the mask layer and added the darker sage green to the pattern. Of course this is classic for me; always learning after the fact.
Anyhow, I am really pleased with how this piece turned out and I have bigger ideas for the next few watercolors. Enjoy - Jared.

1 comment:

Valerie A. Heck Esmont said...

I wanted to comment on your mental trinket. I take all of our junk mail, computer miss prints, and paper that are trash and use them to line my pet bird's cage. Rather than just thow our the paper then it's getting a second use. Works for me!