Friday, January 27, 2023

Water colour

 

Last August Diana headed a bit deeper into the woods and took a little painting course with her friends. A few days later she emerged with tales of all sorts of trouble and woe. Not having done art, she’d bought some supplies she thought would work, like pencils and pastels, but it turned out everyone was using water colour. So she found herself thrust into water colour with a few brushes and a motley collection of donated tubes of paint.
She hated the lack of precision of watercolor. In her attempt to perfectly recreate reality, she was being hindered by the medium’s very identity: water. It splashes, it spreads of its own design. It dilutes. “Instead of painting lines, I’m painting little strings of clouds,” she said. “Look,” she said. “How are you supposed to get all those colours?”
She started making colour charts. And complained about the foibles. Complained that she needed special paper. And in order to not waste the paint she already had, she needed to buy more colours and brushes … complaining each time that she didn’t like water colour.
So that was August. I posted a video of how it’s going now.
Rather than a fish to water, she took to it like a ewe stuck with some rejected lamb. Eventually the fiery Diana bonded, warming herself to evenings of adventure watching YouTube… how to paint a cloudy sky, a tree, feathers, shadows… and it goes on these chilly winter nights. It looks like what will later be known as her avian period is coming to and end. She accepted the challenge to paint a person. Whatever comes next, we know the ewe and her lamb won’t be parted.

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