Painterly

I think I had a little bit of a breakthrough today, though I'm not sure it's something I will pursue beyond this month of painting. The thing I discovered is that when you paint directly, instead of making a drawing first—whether pencil or contour—watercolor can become more like other paints. I don't know that this is "right"—after all, when using watercolor, you still want it to be transparent and have that quality you can't achieve with acrylics or oils. But in today's exercise, at least, I almost felt like I was back with acrylic.

The fun part of it is to SEE and then PAINT what you see, rather than seeing the outline you put down on paper and filling it in. I think it sparked recognition from the old acrylic days because, even though you put a base drawing on a canvas, with acrylic (because it is opaque) you have to let go of your drawing pretty quickly and see the paint instead. With watercolor, you can (if you wish) see your drawing until the very end.

Today, I tried some mixing right on the page, instead of doing it all ahead of time—introducing pure colors into other pure colors and letting them mix spontaneously. In some cases, it was also messily, and in several areas it was overworked, but it's something I haven't done much before. It was most successful in the places (top of vinegar bottle) where I did something quickly and surely and then left it alone. I went back into the olive oil bottle about three times too many.

I'm also enjoying the idea of painting with absence—letting the background define the foreground, so to speak. I started this painting with the bottoms of these two bottles, outlining the top half of the garlic, and worked outward from bottom center. When I do a "regular" picture, I usually start tidily at the top and proceed to the bottom, so that's another change. Of course, because I did that, I misestimated sizes and heights and ran out of room for the top of the olive oil bottle, but...oh well.

 I think maybe the bottom line is this, and maybe this is what Marc is trying to get us to see: When I do a contour drawing and then paint afterward, I'm never sure that I'm actually a painter. Sure, I'm focused on things like shapes and shadows, but it's all within an outline, and a little voice in my head is screaming either "illustrator" or "sketcher," not "painter." And many people out there echo that idea—a "real" painter works in oil, right? But this month. I'm definitely a painter!