Last night as I was trying to get myself and Alexander to sleep, I got a picture in my head for an acrylic painting. Actually, it was more a 'colour composition'. I bought my mum this teal vase for her birthday last week and I really love this teal colour lately. The vision was of it in amongst one of those old fashioned style still life paintings with a dark and moody background and a voluptuous soft pink peony spilling from it. Whether I'll ever actually paint it is another matter. Alexander and I have a long way to go I think before I'll be able to get the acrylics out and paint a picture without Alexander deciding he wants 'pick up' and me abandoning the acrylics to dry up on the palette and the tubes with their lids off for a week. But this 'composition that never was' situation has been happening quite often lately so, as it was still in my head this morning and Alexander was having an extended snooze, I got my sketchbook and tried to bring the idea into the world just in case...
But as Alexander kept sleeping, and as I actually had some Promarkers in the right colours, the quick composition sketch became quite involved! Had I set out to make a proper job of this I would of course have dealt properly with the stem in the water which I have completely forgotten to 'refract'. This is the problem with me...I don't learn...it wasn't all that long ago I spent ages drawing that purple straw in the glass of fizzy water where the straw was all zig-zaggy from the refraction. But I find when I draw out of my head rather than observationally, all I know to be true just disappears. I could draw a thousand relatively cat-like cats from real life but then draw one from my imagination and it look like a ball with sticks hanging out!
Equipment: Berol Italic pen (I stole the idea to use a pen like this from the fabulous
Jodi Wiley (thank you for the inspiration, Jodi), A5 Hahnemuhle sketchbook, Promarkers.
