| Author | Message | ||
  Joanna Advanced Member Username: Joanna Post Number: 179 Registered: 10-2006 |
Happy accident, Eugene. The figures partially obscured by the little stand of trees lead the eye to the next set of figures. It's very nice indeed. | ||
George Unregistered guest |
Eugene, yes I agree! It’s a very strong design. | ||
Eugene Senior Member Username: Eugene Post Number: 466 Registered: 8-2006 |
I have the 1st stages of Parkinson's. my right hand. doesn't have the dexterity it once had. Last week I was doing a painting of a covered bridge , with some figures walking toward it. When I was almost finished dropped brush, almost on of the figures, which I had planned as the center of interest. I almost gave up, but decided to turn my mistake into a group of trees and add a second set of figures following behind. I think it improved the composition--- do you agree?  not a good photo--bridge is not nearly so bright, and snow is whiter | ||
Joanna Advanced Member Username: Joanna Post Number: 178 Registered: 10-2006 |
I didn't wait to see what spun sugar would do to my painting--and didn't even think of catching any and eating it! What was I thinking! | ||
Grizrev Senior Member Username: Grizrev Post Number: 634 Registered: 8-2006 |
Joanna, how funny -- though I'm sure it wasn't at the time! Were you able to make any use of the accident, or did you have to throw the painting away and start over? | ||
Joanna Advanced Member Username: Joanna Post Number: 177 Registered: 10-2006 |
I had a watercolor accident Saturday!!! We had a festival in town. I got orange paint inside the brim of my Mexican farmer straw hat when I held my brush handle in my teeth for a bit --I was painting outdoors for a few minutes until a cotton candy stand set up shop next to my chair.) Then I got cotton candy fluff all over my sketch. | ||
Grizrev Senior Member Username: Grizrev Post Number: 626 Registered: 8-2006 |
George, you are no doubt right about where most painters "hang out." I think there are few who enjoy or master the rigor of photographic realism, and few who are comfortable with or adept at the abstract and surreal. Most enjoy a combination of impressionistic and representational paintings styles, which are somewhere in the middle ground between the first two styles mentioned. That's probably where I wander around as well, happy when the surprises help me. | ||
George Unregistered guest |
Griz, one other way to generate watercolor surprises (good word) is to use more water. The garden analogy is a good one. I’d rather have "Impression, Sunrise" than a photograph (or photographic painting) of Le Havre harbor too, if they were my only two choices. But, it’s important to understand that with painting styles, as with everything else in life, it isn’t always an either/or situation. Your two gardens, or these two paintings, are really only two extremes along a scale of possible styles. Statistics show that very few people (in terms of percentages) hang out at any of the extremes along any of the scales of human preferences. Therefore, if human tendencies hold true (as one would expect them to) the largest percentage of watercolor artists would tend toward a style that is both somewhat safe (controlled) yet with just enough mystery (looseness) to keep it interesting. In other words, the middle of the scale. | ||
Grizrev Senior Member Username: Grizrev Post Number: 625 Registered: 8-2006 |
George, maybe we can start a movement to change "accidents" to "serendipities" or "surprises." You are right. The term "accidents" has entirely too many negative connotations (although where would music be without "accidentals!) The things we have in mind are unexpected ("out of or apart from the expected order") and unintended incidents or occurrences that sometimes prove to be pleasant and pleasing. The best way to generate them is to be loose, free, energetic, spontaneous, and open in our approach to painting. I thought of an analogy I see in gardens. Though both formal Italianate gardens and joyous, rambling English border gardens require planning and hard work, I think one style could be called "tight," if not "uptight" in appearance, and the other could be called "loose." Of course, some people enjoy being tight, and some enjoy being loose. It is not a matter of being right or wrong. Again, variety is the spice of life. It takes all kinds in art just as it does in life. It's a matter of taste and style. It's just that for me I would rather have "Impression, Sunrise" than a photograph (or photographic painting) of Le Havre harbor. | ||
George Unregistered guest |
While looking over that website I came across this fascinating series of watercolor cartoons. I just had to post it for your enjoyment. My favorite is “Repressed Hostility.” I’ve met people like that. Enjoy! http://www.animationarchive.org/2006/02/media-artzybasheffs-neurotica.html | ||
George Unregistered guest |
Dee, that’s a good website for backruns. Here’s a website that talks about accidents in watercolor. Also, some good wash drawings! “a loose brush stroke, a bit of paper peeking through the dry brush, or a bleeding bit of pigment can look beautiful. The accidents are natural looking.” I still think, if it were up to me, I'd use a different word than accident. http://www.animationarchive.org/2007/11/wash-painting-in-praise-of-happy.html | ||
Grizrev Senior Member Username: Grizrev Post Number: 624 Registered: 8-2006 |
George, good example! The other kind of accident I had in mind was something like your experience, when the flow of too much water unexpectedly carried the color of one shape into another, creating an interesting or appealing mingling at the edges that wasn't originally intended. Sometimes you can replicate the exact color and textures created and sometimes you cannot. I guess when I talk about valuing "looseness" in a watercolor painting, I am really talking about the relaxed or looseness in the approach that leaves more room for the unexpected to happen. Sometimes that "looseness" is reflected in the finished result, especially in the freedom and sweep and swirl of the strokes that often accompany such a painting. Such "looseness" is often a--ociated with impressionistic or abstract paintings, but it is just at home in more representational paintings, alhough it may not be appropriate for the tight control often needed in exacting realism. | ||
Deecubed Junior Member Username: Deecubed Post Number: 14 Registered: 12-2007 |
As I mentioned in the Texture thread, my latest "happy accident" was leaning a terry cloth towel into a still damp painting. Different than salt and waterspray ... interesting. Have any of you seen the work of the artist, Roderick MacIver, of HeronDance? He uses blossoms, backruns, cauliflowers very effectively. I have wondered, too, if he uses mediums to make the paint move as blossoms. Will have to ask. Talk about loose watery paintings. Check it out at www.herondance.org ... | ||
George Unregistered guest |
Griz, you asked me for an unintended incident that had occurred in my painting experience that I have learned to replicate. A number of years ago I was doing a painting on a sheet of Yupo that was very wet. I left the painting to dry for a few hours and when I returned I, believing it must be dry, picked it up only to find the paint running down the sheet. I quickly reversed the tilt of the sheet to minimize the damage. I could not save the painting, but the result was a wonderful swirling of colors that could not have been created with a brush. On my next painting I drew a shape with a pencil to represent one of the objects in the painting where I believed the swirling wash effect would work well. I then poured some colors within the lines of the shape and tilted the sheet slightly, rocking it slowly, until the paint came to the drawn line. With some practice I was able to match the movement of the swirling watercolor to the desired shape. To this day I’ve not found any other way to get the same effect. | ||
George Unregistered guest |
Griz, you’re right. Some watercolor artists enjoy the spontaneity of happy accidents no matter how infrequent, while other artists enjoy learning how to purposely repeat the accident. Different personalities approach watercolor in different ways. My approach is to take the infrequent happy accident and analyze the conditions that caused it so that I can make it happen again. But, that’s just how my mind works. How about others who may be reading this? What is your reaction to watercolor accidents? | ||
Grizrev Senior Member Username: Grizrev Post Number: 623 Registered: 8-2006 |
George, I should add that I agree with you that we can learn from "accidents" and turn them into useful techniques in our repertoire of painting techniques. Nevertheless, I still contend they may still occur as "accidents," or unintended incidents, in our future paintings -- which we may or may not choose to use in the finished painting. I also agree that most "accidents" are not appealing. | ||
Grizrev Senior Member Username: Grizrev Post Number: 622 Registered: 8-2006 |
George, I think unintended things will often happen in the process of a painting a watercolor, unless the artist happens to be inclined toward the anal retentive personality disorder, or, more simply, happens to be a "control freak." People who have that tight, orderly, controlled approach to painting will no doubt experience fewer serendipities. What you say is true about artists having the ability to make use of a pleasing, appealing, or happy "accident," which I define as an unplanned and unintended incident in the painting process, and integrate it into their finished painting -- just as they have the ability to correct an unintended incident that is not appealing. They certainly can try to discern what produced the "accident," and learn to replicate it as part of their artistic "technique" in the future. But it may still slip up on them and occur as an "accident," or something they did not intend, in the future. An accident I don't think I would want to risk replicating in the future happened on a fly-fishing float trip a year or two ago. I had pulled up on a shoal in the river, sketched a lovely little pen and ink drawing of the landscape around me, when all of a sudden my driftboat began to drift away! As I leaped up to catch it, my sketch dropped in the river. Though I felt it was ruined, the river water actually produced some interesting abstract washes and runs that (in my opinion) added to the appeal of the sketch. I have to classify that as a "happy" accident, but one I wouldn't intentionally try to replicate. George, come on, tell us about some happy unintended incident that has occurred in your painting experience that actually added to the appreal of one of your paintings and made you so "happy" that you have learned to replicate it -- even though it may happen accidentally again in the future. | ||
George Unregistered guest |
Griz, what you say is right. The artist is not always in absolute control of all that happens on the way to a finished painting. The term happy accident as it is used in watercolor has always bothered me. Accidents in life are thought of as unlucky and potentially hurtful occurrences. Somewhere in the history of watercolor someone tagged the natural tendency of watercolor paint to run out of control as an accident, and tagged those accidents which produce a useful or beautiful visual effect as a happy accident. I suspect that the majority of watercolor accidents are more often unhappy, rather than happy, occurrences. But, when these accidents do happen with a useful or beautiful result a good artist will record the conditions under which the good results came about so that the effect can be used again in future paintings. In these cases is it not really more a new technique than an accident? A technique born from an initial accident but repeated, recreated and polished as a skill. I’m thinking of the example I gave of Andrew Wyeth’s backruns in my August 8, 2008 - 10:39 post on the "Pictures open for critique 2" thread. http://community.cheapjoes.com/forum/messages/25/3684.html?1218309966 If what I’ve said is correct, shouldn’t we be talking about managed chaos (a high level of control that gives the appearance of a loose and spontaneously created watercolor) instead of accidents? Agree/disagree? | ||
Grizrev Senior Member Username: Grizrev Post Number: 621 Registered: 8-2006 |
Though the artist has the final word, he or she is not always in absolute control of all that happens on the way to a finished painting. Accidents, if nothing else, remind me that serendipities and a change of plan along the way is not a bad thing. They teach us to "hang loose" as we interact with our materials. Since George has suggested that we elaborate a little more on the value of watercolor "accidents," here's a beginning. One of my favorites is the unplanned run that occurs on the tilted surface of a painting as the result of too much water in the brush on paper that is already sufficiently wet. It often creates an interesting "incident at the edge" of a shape, breaking up a monotony of regularity that might otherwise have been unnoticed. Variety is the spice of life! Your turn, George. Maybe some others will chime in as well! |
