It Started With an Exploding Watermelon.............

"Dawning" watercolor

Painting Challenge

Today's painting began as another of those challenges that I often give to a class or workshop. This one came from my watercolor class at The Eye Studio. We were working wet-on-wet color gradations (so in other words just letting our paint run from one end of the paper to the other---in this case bottom to top).As the paint made its way down the paper we added a light yellow, letting the colors bleed together. Then when the paper was still slightly wet we dropped bits of light green onto the paper. I also dropped bits of red paint.

So when mine was done it looked like the painting below. Since it looked like an exploding watermelon I had jokingly named it "Front Row Seats at the Gallagher Concert".

And what is the challenge? 

To find an image in the abstraction. To me the green and red "spots" seemed to float through the air rather like specks of dust, pollen, or bits of plant and insect life catching the early morning sunlight. I was imagining the dawning of a day as seen from the ground and looking up.

Negative space painting was used in the bottom half of the painting giving a somewhat dreamy quality to the part of the earth still waking up.