"New Season" heads to Shanghai!!!
This painting ("New Season") made the initial cut for the Zhujiajiao watercolour show at Expo 2010 in Shanghai! This is so exciting for me! (i.e. i just had to share the news). No guarantee of making the final cut - but to get this far makes me both proud and humble!
8 comments:
Very nice work Joel.
Looking forward to more along these lines.
Hope you're managing to keep cool.
wonderful light
thanks Dake! i will try more along these lines - hopefully incorporating some of your immediacy, speed and bravura. it is very cool here now. i know you are in for a long, hot one over there.
fernando! yeah. the light is the main redeeming feature in this i think. i don't think it has any other great claims. but i will incorprate lessons learnt here as we progress...
That really looks like a couple of rainclouds pouring down a few miles away -- intentional, or did it just happen? I hope I see this one IRL soon!
hi Nick! it is absolutely intentional. and i did it for several reasons.
(1) i still like painting stuff that portrays scenes that people relate to. it still amazes me that i can control the paint and water to make something look real enough to be understood. that novelty has not worn off.
(2) seeing rain from a distance, over a plain, it looks totally different. it still has the life-giving properties - but it looks less significant than when it is falling on top of a person.
(3) getting this effect with watercolors is very, very difficult and took many attempts. i used a pair of pigments that are natural complements and tend to separate in high concentration. that is cerulean and vermillion. they also make a killer grey. if you add a lot of water and are really patient yoo get the distand rain effect. so it is 100% intentional and a hard-won victory.
(4) this rain effect is a sign of hope in the australian rural landscape. hope of a "new season" and a new crop. it was a springtime painting and much influenced by the drought conditions in australia.
so, that is the story. maybe more than you wanted to know!
This is beautiful, Joel! I think it has a 3 dimensional quality particularly the sky - I can't stop looking at it! Congratulations on making the first cut.
Joel,
Beautiful handling of the sky in particular. Those small patches of light around the edges of the ?cumulo-nimbus are beautiful and the way you've allowed the water to float the colours downward and dry slowly, really gives a powerful sense of atmospheric depth and water vapour... congrats, and best wishes,
Wayne
Nancy. Thanks. This piece was done during several weeks when i was playing with pigments that separate naturally in water. the effect of the rain shower (which i wokred hard to get) was hit and miss and the temp and humidity in the room need to be perfect - but that is where the quality of the 3B comes from i think.
Wayne. Thanks. watercolor can do amazing and unique things. floating the grays down the paper and exposing the whites of the paper at the same time was quite a trick. i could do it a million times and NEVER get the same result. then again if i had an infinite number of monkeys...
:)
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