Watercolor Sketches...

Island on Lake Panache

Sunflowers...Lake Panache

Canoe on Lake Panache

represent freedom to me.  Plans are discarded along with lofty goals.  No thoughts about exhibition entries or saleability.  Limited supplies.  Paint what you see.  Whew!  These sketches, all done on the spot were painted on a 7 x 10 watercolor block.  There were others.  These are the three more successful ones.  It actually took a day or two to find my "watercolor feet" again....to come to terms with the illusion of control and to avoid over-rendering.

They don't have to be perfect.  After all....they are just sketches.

Raking...

Raking   Watercolor/Graphite   21 x 13.25

is an example of what I consider to be a watercolor sketch.  It has many elements that I adore....a figure in motion, a figure physically working (which I consider to be a soulful and noble endeavor), and a person I adore...my husband Rick.  Rick agreed to pose for our watercolor class a few years ago.  This painting is the result.  I am thinking that its brevity is its strongest virtue.  Having a model for a limited time period forces us to get to the point rather quickly...no time for extras such as a background.  In fact, sometimes when a work develops into a full-blown painting, the original spark becomes buried in the paint.  It becomes somehow duller.  Poetry.  Prose.  I enjoy everything about it.  Even the pencil squiggles that create a bit of a border.  Would I have been that carefree on a painting in which I had invested several days?  I don't think so.

The challenge then, for me, is to be able to save the original spark as the painting marches onward and becomes a bit weightier.