more work...perhaps too much on macro watercolor 5, and starting macro watercolor 6 / March 27, 2020 by Philip Tarlow

4:39 PM: today i renewed work on macro watercolor 5 and started marcro watercolor 6. i’m slowly getting into a flow with this new series, renewing my relationship with watercolor as a medium and drawing from my recent song of a flute series journey, as well as my motion and collage series and all that i learned from them.

#5 has quite a bit of collage; #6, thus far has none.

this particular image, this tree trunk, has somehow grabbed my attention and won’t let go. we’ll see where i take it tomorrow. #6 may well be resolved.

this watercolor series has been inspired by the series of trail phootos i shot last summer, using a macro lens on my iphone, which i was experimenting with.

i had a great viber exchange with my grandson philip in athens earlier in the day. i suggested we each make self portrait drawings over the next few days, and then compare what we each did. i’ll let you know how that goes.

a turn for the better / starting macro watercolor 5 / March 26, 2020 by Philip Tarlow

5 PM: this is the second day in a row that we haven’t been able to take our afternoon trail walk, due to extreme winds gusting to 45-50 mph. once i completed work on macro watercolor 4 (see my 1:08pm post, BELOW), i started a new one, which will become macro watercolor 5. in this one, i broke away from using watercolor exclusively and began employing crayons, colored pencils and collage. i did collage a few small bits in the previous watercolor, towards the very end.

you can see the areas that are as yet unresolved, like the tan collaged shape middle right, which needs to be broken up. it’s all music….you don’t want too much bass…

domani

1:08 PM: while looking at this watercolor this morning in the house, mikela had the brilliant idea to turn it on its side. when i came to the studio, i took it from there, added a few collaged pieces and i think it has improved dramatically. wabi sabi!

the faint vertical lines are what i mean by wabi sabi. they can be found in the small collaged magazine cutout in the upper central portion of the composition, BELOW. they literally fly in the face of logic and reason, as art should.

as i have noted many times, mikela has a great eye!

macro watercolor 4 / March 25, 2020 by Philip Tarlow

1:18 PM: today i made a new watercolor based, as are the others in this series, on photos shot with a macro attachment to my lens during our walks up the creek last summer. this one is a tree trunk. the inner area exposed by the parting outer bark, much like the human body, is more raw and fleshy in tone.

but, forgetting that it’s the trunk of a tree, one of the sources of much indigenous imagery can be seen.

continued work on macro watercolor 3 and an unexpected small watercolor / March 24, 2020 by Philip Tarlow

2:48 PM: macro watercolor 3 is complete….or is it? generally, i don’t spend this much time on a a watercolor, so i can’t help but feel that i overworked it. i’ll know better once i take it back to the house & look at it over the next 24 hours.

1:47 PM: i’m currently continuing work on macro watercolor 3, which i began working on yesterday. what you see sitting on my easel above it is a small experiment to see how the paper in this little sketchbook takes watercolor, and i was pleasantly surprised!

so i’m continuing work now…

macro watercolor 3 / March 23, 2020 by Philip Tarlow

3:54 PM: i started macro watercolor 3 today, but had some unavoidable interruptions, which is not the greatest thing when making a watercolor. so i stopped and will see if i can resume in the morning.

it could very well stand as a completed piece, so i’ll see how i feel about it tomorrow. we might go out walking as soon as mikela gets off her call, but it’s windy as hell & it might be better to wait till tomorrow.

actually in it’s present state, this one is much closer to the delicate balance possible with a watercolor than the previous two. as matisse once said:” ….i had forgotten all the little details and, in my pictures, retained only the striking and poetic side. until then i had been pursued by the love of exactness, which most people mistake for truth.”

macro watercolor 2 / March 22, 2020 by Philip Tarlow

3:04 PM: i made the second in a new series of watercolors inspired by macro photos i shot while we were walking up the trail last summer. i’m using a 16 x 12” block of acid free, hot pressed watercolor paper, which is smooth….no grain at all.

using watercolor after all this time working in oil on linen is a refreshing change, requiring a very different mindset and use of the brush. every stroke counts, and there is a greater awareness of the negative spaces as the brush moves over the paper. even more so than with oil, you need to know when to stop.

macro watercolor 1 / March 21, 2020 by Philip Tarlow

3:14 PM: this morning i made preparations for the first in the series i spoke of yesterday, based upon macro photos i shot on our creek walks last summer.

the watercolor started off well, but perhaps because i didn’t get a good sleep last night, i stumbled & became a bit unconscious when i got to the lower right portion. so i may decide to crop it tomorrow, as you see on the lower right, and just complete that portion of the watercolor. as you probably know, whatever you do in a watercolor can’t be changed.

self portrait in colored pencil / March 20, 2020 by Philip Tarlow

3:06 PM: this morning, using a wood framed mirror i found in an abandoned stone house on the island of andros in about 1975, i made a self portrait in colored pencil.

this afternoon i transferred images i had shot with a macro lens this past summer on our creek walks from my phone to my imac. i’ll be using some of them for small paintings in gouache & watercolor on paper, starting perhaps as early as tomorrow.

if i appear to be swinging wildly between topics to paint, that’s because i am. you could call it my reaction to the covid-19 situation. right now i would have been preparing for my trip to greece april 11, which of course i cancelled. the situation in greece right now, as elsewhere in the world, is tragic. it may be that shifting my focus to this series of close up images of natural forms will serve to ground me and remind me of my passion for painting patterns,

forms, colors whether representational or otherwise.

sound of a flute collage / March 19, 2020 by Philip Tarlow

4:47 PM: today i created a collage which is part of my sound of a flute series. it’s the first collage in the series and includes collaged elements, watercolor marks, colored pencil and oil pastel. the dimensions are 20 x 8.5 “

creek watercolor #1 / March 18, 2020 by Philip Tarlow

*2020 rocks and water* watercolor, 14x17”

3:24 PM: i/we thought this hunkering down period was going to be a huge gift. but since it began 3-4 days ago, i haven’t been able to do any decent work, or very much work at all. i’ve been wandering around my studio like a lost soul, looking here & there for clues as to what i should/could be doing, yesterday i did such god-awful work on il torrente that i just deleted yesterdays blog post; something i’ve never done before.

so finally, after paying some bills and wandering around some more, i found two blocks of watercolor paper and started a watercolor of rocks & water.

a novel thing to paint, eh?

based upon the mood i’m in right now, i may just continue making rocks & water watercolors until the weather permits my first forays to paint plein air at the creek, which has never failed to put wind in my sails.

what got me going finally was the text of a book i have on cézanne’s watercolors. the descriptions were so graphic and beautifully written that it reminded me of the pleasure i take in making watercolors, which i haven’t done in a while. in my wanderings today i came across this 14x17” block of watercolor paper, with a nice smooth surface, just the way i like it. what was interesting to me about the cézanne text was his description of how his pencil marks and very light watercolor marks are interdependent, and how cézanne plays them off against one another in a unique way. that appeals tremendously to my sensibilities, and is how i’ve used watercolor going all the way back to my greek period plein air paintings.

the one you see on the right is not a perfect example of this pencil/watercolor technique, but it was handy, hanging as it does in our bedroom. it’s a 2005 watercolor of pithara, a waterfall in the hills of the cycladic island of andros, greece.