Day 15 – A Watercolorist’s Journal
Sometimes I’m happy with the light pencil sketch done before I even mix my paints. Faint lines meant to dissolve into the painting or be lifted up later with a soft eraser. But I don’t mind the lines peaking out. It’s hard to think of watercolor paintings, no matter how complete or refined, as anything other than sketches. It seems natural for the bones of the painting to show.
The little hummingbird that is about to jump onto the page in a splash of blue and green must have some starting point. We must say, here, his round shining eye, here the curve of his body, rounded, arching away from the curve of the flower stems, mirroring their lines with his whole self, completing the circle.
And for the whale, lumpy and morose, with its great jutting forehead and sliver of jaw, the proportions must be just right. The placement of the eye is crucial, the relationship between the dark pupil and the white sclera, the direction of the gaze. That will be everything. And it is all there, in a faint trace of graphite, before the first drop of paint hits the page.