Group Meeting: Lab Book #24

 

To complete the Lab Book #24 series required another full sized painting or so I thought. The remaining doodles covered the bottom half of the painting with the central pillar. The rest of the painting (the upper yellowish elements) were all done fresh from my imagination instead of from previous doodles. Loosely speaking, the top half is like a sunset sky, and the bottom half is like a lake reflecting the sky with ducks swimming and some underwater creatures. I've been reading about Van Gogh again hence all the yellow variations and blue/green highlights.

I just updated the previous blogs with full sized version photos of the first in the series, The Web we Leave, and the second in the series, The Budget Beast. The designs of the three paintings are very similar. They portray a web-like collage of interconnected doodles without any particular focal point. The designs contain points of interest where the scene is almost real, interspersed with fragmented, almost cubist elements. The first of the series was done in a very thin, textured black outline, the second done with a smooth dark blue outline, and the third (present) painting had a blend of blue, brown and greenish grey produced by mixing burnt sienna (PR101) with prussian blue and phthalo blue (PB27 and PB15 red shade). The first has sparse colouring with a limited palette, the second has no additional colouring beyond the blue outline, and the third has the most diverse colouring although parts are still left as outline only. 

When I first started doing doodleism, I brought one to an art show and an artist told me that people like to see objects rather than a wall of doodles. That painting was Lab Book #4 Finding Space, it was very fun to paint that one and the title was a double entendre. I was finding space on the paper to fit all the doodles, and there is a small space scene in the center which you can find by looking! For years I tried to establish form with the style, for example  Apple Eye, Violet Sky; Lab Book # 10 where a bunch of doodles were combined into a large apple. In the current Lab Book #24 series I went all the way back to the start and paid hommage to the 'web of doodles' composition in Lab Book #4. 

Regardless of who might like or not like these paintings, it was a great way to pass some time, and I got to practice using three of my detail brushes. The first was done with a sable Series 7 number zero which produced very thin, scratchy marks and was a pain to keep loaded with paint. The second was done with a slightly larger sable Series 7 number two which held more paint but produced much thicker, harder to control lines. And the third (present) painting was done with a synthetic fiber Princeton Neptune number 2. The last one was the best, it produced thin enough lines, held paint, and was easy to control. Each brush gave a distinct characteristic to the outlines. 

Group Meeting: Lab Book #24, watercolour, 22 x 30" hot press, January 2023 (No. 2030b)

Here are some crops for a closer look: 

 

crop 1 Birds and Eyeball Sunset

 

crop 2 Cartoon Whale in Yellow Sea