Gray Zone

Often in the pages of my lab books there are one or two doodles that make good paintings. The first doodle I turned into a painting was "Master of the Margin" done some time between 1998-2000, the original was sold out of the gallery in London Ontario. This image was also used in the recent painting Lab Book #10, Apple eye, violet sky....it appears in the upper right portion of that painting. Here the mermaid character is featured in the center of the image, the symmetry broken by the curving background and curvacious figure of the mermaid. As the name implies this painting is based on shades of gray. I actually just poured water on my palette and mixed up a bunch of colours randomly until a grey mud came out. I then deposited the mus onto the paper and before it dried, I dropped in bright, pure colours to create the greens in the grass(and blue shadow by the mermaid), the highlights on the horizon, and the graded-yellows in the swooping cloud/ceiling. The pinks you see in the cloud/ceiling were then applied after everything dried by applying a thin layer of rose madder. The blue/red/black combination around the mermaids head is the darkest and brightest part of the work, drawing your eyes to that particular area.

Gray Zone, watercolour 10 x 11" cold press, fall 2008 (No. 1436)