Remotely Controlled

Remotely Controlled is another doodleism painting taken out of notebooks from around 2010. I have been trying to catch up to my notes, but now it is 2012 and I am still working on the 2010 and 2011 notes! Lately I have been putting less doodles in the paintings, and using the background elements more... for example here the water is done using classic wet in wet wash techniques. I think the painting gets more energy this way. I'm not sure this painting has a particular meeting, it is remiscent of "Stubborn Nature Revealing Herself" which was Lab book #8 I believe. The guy with the key in the front right must know...

I used a lot of paynes grey and sepia in this one to create the heavy outlines and the inky black sky. Ironically, the ink coming from the flying squid is not black. I once read that you should stay away from these kind of dark colours in a watercolour, beacause is messes up your palette, and also, the impressionists rarely used black in their paintings until later on in the movement, in the neo-impressionism phase. I also noticed that the Canadian watercolour association states that paintings should only make mimimal use of 'body colour' ...in otherwords, no heavy darks, instead a watercolour should be thin, tranparent, and colourful. Of course the best rule of all: rules are made to be broken.

Cold press, 11x15", fall 2011