Colourful Ideas

Good ideas are bright ideas, so great ideas are colourful ideas? I was thinking about all the different graduate students I have supervised over the years or from when I was a graduate student and had this vision of colourful, living sculptures in the laboratory. The background of this painting is a surreal laboratory environment, finished in neutral pastel tones. The three objects are kind of like warped cell phones, with bright, contrasting colours inside of them. It is the people who make the discoveries after all, not the lab equipment.

Making blended washes is a good technique to use in watercolour. I have read a book called 'Everything you Need to Know About Watercolor", and one chapter was on colour chickens. The exercise had you mixing two pigments and letting them naturally blend together on the paper to create an interface, resulting in a chicken-like shape. The trick is getting the moisture right, too much and the colours just merge into one wash, too little, and the colours dry without mixing. I used the colour-chicken concept in several places, the obvious being within the three main figures. I also used the technique in the floor by blending red, yellow, and a neutral grey, and blue. Each pigment has its own temperament that will affect how it blends, so it is worth practicing a lot to get the feel for it. Now I am tempted to do a new painting called colour chickens.

5 x 7" cold press. Watercolour. March 2019