Snowed in and catching up

Well, it's not that there's so much snow, although there is a lot, it's the ice that makes getting off my hill pretty treacherous.  So, I am trying to pay attention to chores having gone undone for a while, and updating my blog.

I haven't written since I went to Myrna Wacknov's Variations Five Day Workshop in Portland [http://www.myrnawacknov.blogspot.com/ ], where, with one image she sent before the workshop, we worked with major elements of design, including shape, size, direction, value, line, color and texture, and relationsips of unity, repetition, donimance, balance, harmony, gradation, etc. [Long sentence, I know, but it tells you a little bit about why the workshop had to be five days!]

Myrna sent us an image of a San Francisco artist named Mike Johnson, who is a very interesting character.  Each day, after Myrna demoed and shared inspiring and creative ideas, we would paint one or two paintings using dominant elements and limited palettes.  Challenging but really liberating in some ways.

We had to roll the dice and a draw slips of paper to determine dominant design elements we were to use, and colors we could use.  My first "roll" and "draw" were Shape dominant with  Direction secondary, and a palette of blue/green and yellow/orange.  What does one do??

Here's one I did just to loosen up and try a "variation" with my Dr Ph Martin Hydrus watercolors.

These watercolors are extremely concentrated and dry permanently.  In all other ways, they act like traditional watercolors.  The fun thing to do with these is to "draw" with the droppers themselves.  The painting of "Big Mike" was done almost exclusively with the droppers, and watercolor crayon.  LOVED the process and am painting/drawing with them more than with traditional watercolors at the moment.



Will be doing a second post today if I can't get outside  ...