Play Time - Studies

I've admired Nathan Fowkes' sketchbook studies and wanted to try this myself because I tend to be in a big hurry to get into my painting, without doing some preliminary work ahead of time to insure a better composition. So this weekend I played around with gouache and watercolor on some scrap papers.

On Saturday, I worked on the following three compositions. These were from a picture I took in Sedona about 6 years ago. The paper for these were cut about 5 x 7 and masked off with artist tape.

This was done on pink matboard, probably not the best color, but it was just an experiment. I signed with an opaque white paint marker, but it still wasn't dark enough for me.

This was a similar composition and view. I like the black paper much better.

This was on an oatmeal color cardstock - reminds me of butcher's paper.

I like the pencil for the writing. I like this piece the best.

So, yesterday I got the brilliant idea I needed more colors in gouache. I bought a few colors of grey and a sepia. It didn't work out at all. I think the range was too close on the greys and the sepia too dark for that range.

This is something I want to master - if you can view/create something in grey scale and the composition works, then it will work well in color.

 

 The following abstract piece was just playing. I had started a scene from a picture at Inniswood, but it just looked terrible, so I just started slashing colors on the paper. Just wasn't working out yesterday for some reason. I think I need to simplify the subject matter.