Have a Ball, Washington DC, USA

Recently I was in Washington DC for a conference, near the hotel there was a little sculpture of the Amercian flag wrapped around a globe, not sure what the symbolism was supposed to mean but it made for an interesting painting subject. Normally I do not like to paint pictures of 'other people's art', for example, as seen here, a sculpture that somebody else designed. But in this case the sculpture was only part of the larger landscape, I liked the way the red of the flowers near the sidewalk played against the reds of the flag, and thought the fence line was interesting enough to carry the painting and make the sculpture an accessory rather than the main focus.

On occasion I have had to paint spheres, they most commonly appear in lamp bulbs, but similar types of shapes are found on cathedral domes, or in this case, globe shaped sculptures. There is going to be one small area of the sphere that is reflecting maximum light, you should decide where that is and make sure to leave it totally white (blank paper, as there is no white in watercolour). Around the white dot I then do a gentle fade from pale orange, blending it into the shadow part. Usually that never quite looks right so I puton a third layer or even fourth layer to get the shadow looking right. At the bottom of the sphere in this case, there is some yellow reflected up from the grass which I made with a few drops of lemon yellow and a touch of virdian (a deep green). Overall it is a high level of difficulty to paint a sphere, and in this case there was the overlapping flag elements, which I put on last. Then I wrestled with the thing for awhile, lifting paint here and adding shadows there. Fortunately it turned out okay in the end.

watercolour 5x7" cold press 2011