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| Waiting for the Coffee to Brew – 8×9 Water Soluble Graphite & Watercolor |
My friend JMC came over the other day with new art supplies. We set up a still life and used water soluble graphite in a tin (made by Artgraf), and a water soluble sketching pencil (made by Derwent) [See below]. The products are quite different in saturation & lift-ability on cold press paper vs plate-finish illustration board. The saturation was much lighter in value on the cold press, but very dark & rich on the plate finish surface. The cold press paper also didn’t allow the graphite washes to lift or erase as easily as one might expect, but while re-wetting the graphite on the illustration board, it lifted completely, to stark white, so if you wanted to knock value back just a bit with a wet brush, that required some strategy to avoid lightbulb whites. Who knew paper would make such a difference in the performance of simple pencil lead? Art-Brain-Aerobics.
Last night, I started another experiment with the graphite – again on illustration board – laying it down in thick and thin washes, and adding watercolor. It was satisfying to drybrush the facial details today, while listening to an audio book. I often wonder how Andrew & Jamie Wyeth work(ed) in drybrush on such large pieces, as it requires quite a bit of focus and concentration for me. This week, I found a video of Jamie painting a mass of seagulls and a figure on a huge piece of cardboard. You can see it below.
Have you found any art making videos on youtube or vimeo that inspire you? If so, please share the links in the comments. The art above is available in my Etsy Shop.
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| Scumbling loose washes of color over the graphite |
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| Testing effects of water soluble graphite on a still life using a pencil (by Dewent) and graphite compressed in a tin (by Artgraf) on plate finish illustration board |
The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston has a Jamie Wyeth exhibit right now. If I lived in New England, I’d go, but since I don’t, I’m very grateful for digital publishing, because we can all have a little glimpse & preview the exhibition here. We can also watch this compelling short video (below) of the artist working with watercolor on a giant sheet of cardboard (!!). (If you get this blog via email, you can see the video here.)
Thank you for the link to the Jamie Wyeth video. Wow. The light and movement in that painting just blew me away. I was nodding my head vigorously when he was talking about why he paints; he articulated how I feel about painting so well.
I love Andrew Wyeth’s work, but my favorite Wyeths are N.C. and Jamie. I wish I lived in New England so I could see that exhibit, too!
I use the tin graphite at our once a week life drawing session. It’s great for quick gesture poses! Thanks for posting the Wyeth video! I saw this years ago in Paris when I had the fortunate opportunity to see a show with all three of the Wyeths. They were showing this video too. It was great to see it again! Watercolor on cardboard, just blew me away.
@sonia, I loved what was happening in Jamie’s painting too – so much passion – and on cardboard! But the wetting of brushes in the mouth… eegads, I gasped when I saw that. Yikes is right!
@debbie, thanks for the video of KJ – she is amazing. I think I’ll post that video in case others have missed it. And I did enjoy Jamie’s breathing, view-finding and musing – but not the wetting of brushes! 🙂
@barbara, thanks, love. And yeah, if the coffee pot is slow to drip, I vote for getting back in bed till it’s finished! 🙂
Interesting experiments – I’ve not seen the graphite in a tin before. With reference to the Wyeth video, really liked the effect he was achieving using watercolour. Really not sure about the “tasting” – especially as that looked like cadmium yellow! Yikes…….
Here is a link of Karin Jurick painting a street scene https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mt_E6RjH0CY&list=FL4h0LYtTZmhBdOxCcfDwhxw&index=71
I love how he breathes it, smells it and tastes it. Thank you for sharing.
Love this and the feeling of fatigue. You ‘re really tired when you lie down to wait for the coffee. Super video. Just astounding and the quote is right on.
XOXOXOXOXO Barbara