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Mather Creative Mindfulness: Henri Matisse inspirations
I was so excited to start this project, I actually worked ahead a bit. Henri Matisse was was a late 19th Century Artist who worked up until the early 1900's. Todays' inspiration was the Goldfish Bowl from 1912.
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L
at Our instructions today were to watercolor a goldfish bowl on Watercolor paper, and then cut it out and place on black paper cardstock, then draw a background.
I used simple water colors...on my bowl shape. I forgot to take any photos of that process..
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| oldnewgreenredo |
You know when you are in the zone you forget everything. I used this palette.
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| oldnewgreenredo |
and also watercolor pencils to use for sketching. The white and yellow worked well on the black cardstock.
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| oldnewgreenredo |
I started sketching with Colored Pencils....just to get a feeling of where the background would be...a table a plant and brown legs to support a table. We were encouraged to make a colored patterned background.
I grabbed what I thought were oil pastels for their brilliance, but found it was an unmarked set of basic soft pastels. The colors seemed brilliant...until...
I'll explain later.
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| oldnewgreenredo |
With only 45 minutes to work on this, I fussed with the table top...I haven't done much work on black papers, but it is fun...and definitely developed a different take.
I imagined an old tablecloth with some lace edging, I thought would be interesting.
A terra cotta pot with two kinds of plants in it and a striped wallpaper and anchoring the whole thing, two big knobby legs on the table. The colors seemed very bright but the soft pastels were very messy and I grabbed my sealer and didn't look at the label. Workable sealers are great for pastels, it seals what's on the page so it doesn't smudge or mess and then you can work again on top of it. But, this wasn't workable sealer.
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| oldnewgreenredo |
It was a can of regular sealer for wood, plastic, or finished PAINT surfaces...DUH!
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| oldnewgreenredo |
The result was...it drowned out all the brilliance and depth of the pastels and melted it.The purples I used for shadows and design in the wall paper all but disappeared. The orange wood tones in the legs and highlights of yellow disappeared.
Lesson learned. I worked on top and again, sealed and same thing. But, the watercolors got more brilliant,
LOL. Another Lesson learned.
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| oldnewgreenredo |
Again ,I worked over with white soft prismalcolor pencils.
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| oldnewgreenredo |
You can see the dark green melted on the black paper, but not on the watercolored bowl.
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| oildnewgreenredo |
I played a bit and dampened down the colors on the bowl with some smudging of some pastels so toned down, it matched/blended a bit more with the background.
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| oldnewgreenredo |
I may try this all over again...with the proper sealer OR with Oil Pastels.
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| oldnewgreenredo |
Definitely a learning experience...we choose our own materials on these projects so it isn't Mather's fault...but live and learn...and now to go find my
Workable Fixative for Pastels,
I know I have a can somewhere!
Really nice article on Henri Matisse's 'Goldfish' HERE.
Have you Tried anything NEW Lately!
No class the week of Memorial Day...so I'll have to find something else to work on.
Thanks always for visiting,
All the opinions and photographs in this blog are my own, I have not been paid or reimbursed in anyway for my opinions, posts or any products shown.
Thank you for your cooperation,
Sandi
Sandi
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That is beautiful! I haven't tried working on black paper much either but wow this is inspiring me to give it a try.
ReplyDeleteThanks Joanne. I've tried a few things on black paper, and I just bought an entire sketchbook of black paper. I definitely have to find my oil pastels or purchase some. I do know that the new shimmer watercolor paints, acrylic pens, and metallic markers work very well.
DeleteThis is interesting. I'm not sure I'm going to do this one (I don't have the black or the pastels) but I may watch and at least try the fish bowl. I have to say your fish bowl and the tablecloth are exquisite -- especially that cloth, which looks like it took a long while. But the fish too. I fear mine will look more like Matisse's!
ReplyDeleteWell, you could try some oil pastels, if you have those. Like the other floral watercolor, I might be inclined to do a beginning drawing and then marker out the background areas in a dark. I know we both tend to work with white backgrounds, but wow, colors can pop on dark? Hugs, Sandi
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