August 21, 2021 – Tiptoeing Back Into Art with Prep For Potential Watercolor, Mother and Child

I’ve a relatively short post today, mainly to show the culmination of some preliminary prep steps toward a new watercolor on paper, Mother and Child.

Much can be made of course of my mom’s very recent passing and the effect that has had on the development of this image, and of course the title – and it’d all or mostly would be true. That’s ok….

The process of picking choosing new components, then sizing them, to “fit” into what is basically the top 1/3 or so of the Barton Springs watercolor line art poster series I started developing back just before summer. This new top third itself has some digitally hand drawn line extensions, plus – the top left side and the cloud like lines top right – were clipped then reposted into the digital file on their own layers, letting me “size & stretch” them more appropriate to this potential new work. Here those two layers are seen with the rest of the scene’s box “unchecked” thus making it indivisible —

The “mother” is line art I developed from a photo, and the child playing in the water was created the same way, but I don’t have a post on it at this time. I will add the child figure was drawn with a lighter color digital brush, and when I added it (after flipping it horizontally) into a layer among those for this work, it was too light, so I “burned” the lines to more nearly match the mother. Though neither figure fits the density or intensity of line color (dark) of most of the landscape, I intend them to standout from that landscape, to some degree. I just don’t know how much yet. One experimental work I like, with acrylic, with the same female figure, is Testing the Water. A blog post on that work is here – https://felipeadanlerma.com/2021/08/10/august-10-2021-my-newest-art-upload-fineartamerica-testing-the-water-acrylic-on-canvas/ .

Though I realize I’m not firing full strength yet back into my creative work with paint, I do feel I am inching my way back in at a pace that’s allowing me to assimilate what I’m doing with figure work now, and the feelings I having lost my mom, at least here on this earth ❤️

I am working on some parallel figure work I’d thought to serialize over several posts, but just not ready to move past such preliminary work it wouldn’t make much visual sense yet. Especially since I haven’t shown myself I’m on the right track to begin with, lol!

Essentially I’ve taken 3 shots of a walking figure. Readers may recall I posted ( in 3 parts ) about how quickly the light changes from shadow or full sun into dappled light then back again. So these 3 shots I’ve chosen to experiment with are – in shadow, in strong light, and in dappled light. I want to know (I know it can be done), but I want to know, can I do a semblance of that, creatively, but painting (digitally or in pigment, but preferably both) convincing pleasing dappled shadows into the sun blown shot, convincing pleasing dappled light onto the shadowed shot, and make them as pleasing to look at as the dappled light shot. Once I have enough to show, whether I succeed or not, even if it’s just the beginning of the learning curve for me, I’ll post about that. I don’t though, have a timetable for that yet. I’m still asking myself, “What Makes Dappled Light Work? It Almost Always Looks Good!” And, while still searching for the answer, tiptoeing, literally it seems, into the above project, Mother and Child —

Wish me luck – stay well 😊

Adan

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Thanks again, everyone! 😊

Adan

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