13 March 2008

self

Charcoal pencil & watercolor on Whatman CP 600 gsm, 22" x 15".

with the wife gone and some other things in the background, including a bottle of lucid absinthe, i got myself into an unravel and passed a hard night and morning.

i slept until noon and then in the evening dragged myself down to the studio for an audit.

i copied the features from my life mask, in a scribbly uneven hand, then flooded the image with wet color. the whatman paper holds the paint on the surface -- the finish has a subtle frizzy texture that won't let the water down into the pulp -- so that paint blots up easily. the charcoal blurred and flowed along with the paint, subduing the drawing.

i left the painting and went to bed; the next morning i added more paint to the background, and shifted some colors around with magenta or purple, but basically left it as it was.

2 comments:

Nick said...

Flowing charcoal and pastel is one of those things that can look good as you kill the studio lights at 4 AM, but in the morning.... From the pic it looks like it worked well. Chalk one up for the Green Muse....and thanks for letting me know, I'm going to pick up a bottle for substantially less than I paid to have it imported.

William K. Moore said...

I like it.. and it belongs with one of those lovely paintings in the Lascaux collection. Raw and immediate is what I'm digging these days. The arrow hit home on this one.