COMPOSITION

As I’ve mentioned before, I had to teach myself how to work with watercolors, and I did so using what I have since clalled my coloring book approach. This entailed starting with a clean ink drawing, and then applying the wc neatly within the lines, without working wet in wet or graded washes, two of the more difficult skills of wc painting. Avoiding skies, trees, and everything else except the subject, almost always a building of some sort, the painting, by default, became a vignette.

As my vision expanded and the subjects became more complicated, I learned to become more creative in composing the painting, maintaining the vignette approach. Eventually I learned to paint skies, trees, and whatever, but still in the vignette format.

The following paintings show a progression from earliest to later work, from about 1980 to 1990.