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Tag Archives: Technique

Wax and Water

A few months ago, I made a change in my regular life drawing practice.  My primary drawing medium for over fifteen years had been Caran d’Ache Neocolor II aquarelle crayons.  Aquarelle means watercolor, and the pigments laid down by these crayons can be thinned or blended with water, but I always used them as a [...]

Painting as Drawing

I am by my essential nature more drawer than painter.  In taking on painting as a challenge, I have approached it as a form of drawing.  I seek spontaneity, linear expressiveness and energy, and a direct connection between perception and mark-making.  I’m not particularly concerned with sophisticated composition or illusionistic realism.  In drawing, perceptions are [...]

Liquid and Linear

Several weeks ago I posted about beginning to experiment with watercolor painting in the life drawing sessions I attend as a regular practice.  Now I have a batch of new watercolor paintings to share.  I’ll write about my experiences with the new (to me) medium, interspersing illustrations more or less randomly. The classic watercolor approach to the [...]

The Full Gamut

I am a person of serial obsessions.  Every few years I feel compelled to learn everything I can about some topic, usually something esoteric or scientific.  Around 2003-2005, my obsession was color:  the science of light and spectra, the biology and psychology of color perception, the technology of color reproduction, ways of naming colors and [...]

A Toe in the Water

I’ve been doing art sessions with a good friend’s seven year old daughter.  She wanted to learn about painting and I thought pan watercolors would be a good medium to start with – vivid colors, cheap, and not too messy.  Sharing her beginner’s joy with watercolors inspired me to try working with pan watercolors in [...]

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