Originally published August 24, 2020
Well. I surely do not know.
Florkow, if you show the Camden Pirate, he's either going to back away screaming in terror or he's going to want a better look. Wish I'd left a couple of paint tins, brushes, paper, and tape behind. Turns out that thing is on the block, it's been taped to frame the borders. If I did it right, it will be somewhat self matting.
On the subject of Looking
What color is the underside of the eves? Not, what is darker and what is lighter, what colors am I looking at?
There's some sneering in the art world about the use of tins (hard blocks of paint) versus tubes. Tins are for beginners and tubes are for painters. Not so. Tins are actually harder to work with up front, but in the end have a far broader range.
What colors are the underside of the eves?
It's not what you think. Probably. Wood, like sand is never a single color and mostly it's not what you thought you saw from six feet away. Those colors are multiple blends of Burnt Green Earth, Payne's Grey, Burnt Umber, Prussian Blue, Carmine Red, and Opaque White.
I still don't know for sure about that sky. It isn't blue, that's for sure. I'm not quite so heavy handed with this particular color test. It's got at least two additional layers to go on top. But it's not blue, for sure.
I'm not really using my macbook as an easel although... nope. Not gonna do it.
What color is the sky?
This is new to me. I decided to see what would happen if I painted on 48# velum; you know, the stuff that flies right through an inkject printer as if it had no idea it shouldn't. It isn't very absorbent and the paint/water/wash tends to roll right across the page but it blots up nicely.
Interesting discovery. Paint from a printer takes a very long time to dry and may, in fact, smear for upwards of two weeks if handled. Watercolor is there for life, unforgiving, unrelenting, and not so willing to accept additional layers. It was fun but I'm still trying to work out what happened. Exactly.
This was all about the sky as three separate entities, as opposed to a straight wash, which it is not.
It's a window. Are you looking in, Camden Pirate, or are you looking out? Ask the hummingbirds.
All this time it has been Gabriel's Oboe and I have been looking for notes and notations on a staff that are about as literal as you can get. He isn't there; it's just a a map of the terrain.
Can you stand in that spot just past dawn and hear the colors of our own humanity spread out before us, awash in shades of light and dark; the twisted helix of who we were and who we'd like to be.
How can somebody with that much to say decide on an early exit?
Ennio Morricone did not check out early.
November 10, 1928 - July 6, 2020
How can he be gone?