Saturday, January 10, 2009

Dreaming Wren


This one and it's companion piece above were done over the Christmas Holidays during a lull. I was really hoping to get something new done for my Spectrum entry this year and this is one of them.
I can feel myself on the return journey back to watercolour. I started with watercolour years ago but felt the commercial pressure to "paint" with opaque colour so I sort of compromised and started bringing gouache into my work, which definitely punched it up. Gradually the gouache began to take over, which on the one hand is what I wanted, but I always felt like a bit of a trader. I'm now feeling like I want to get back to watercolour and that original inspired feeling it brought me in the beginning and still brings now. But of course the gouache is always handy to make an adjustment when necessary.

4 comments:

Koldo Barroso said...

These are extraordinary watercolor pieces, I love the fragility and atmosphere of it!

Larry MacDougall said...

Koldo

Thanks so much. I've gone right back to the way I worked years ago. Watercolour on hot press paper - loving it !

Larry MacDougall said...

The only problem is getting the scanner to pick up all the soft washes. The scans look a little bleached out in places where there actually is some light colour.
Oh well :)

Justin Gerard said...

Larry, do you ever use any of the watercolor whites in your pieces to achieve opaques (titanium or chinese) in your watercolors, or do you mainly use gouche? This is a great series by the way. Hope to see you in Spectrum!