Watercolor Experiment

Last summer Victor Juhasz, Mike Fay, and I were invited to sketch at a Troops First Foundation sponsored event at the Chevy Chase Golf Course in D.C. Most of the service personnel in attendance were amputees from Walter Reed Army Medical Center. For us, the better part of the day was spent following these guys around from hole to hole trying to capture any little gesture that we could muster onto paper. Evidently, I think I had a much harder time doing this than Victor, who is a freak of nature when it comes to life sketching. There were times, however, when I did snap a few action shots with my camera and, ever since that day, those pictures had been tucked away in an SD card, collecting lots and lots of dust.

Just recently, I decided to be different, to stray away from my comfort zone (the pencil) and go bold. I used watercolor.

It's very rare that I use color for the fact that I am red/green color-blind. I can see red and green, but in a slightly different way than most other people. I have trouble distinguishing values. 

These paintings were done from photographs that I took before the start of the golf tournament.

Random Soldier. Watercolor on 15x11 watercolor paper.

Random Soldier. Watercolor on 15x11 watercolor paper.

It took 2-3 hours to do each piece. I tried not to try too hard, if that makes any sense. The look that I was going for was "controlled chaos with a sense of immediacy". As far as painting is concerned, I still have a long way to go. But with more practice, I believe that I will develop into a damn fine painter.

I look to experiment with other media as time moves on.

Comments

[Skip]

These are good, Rob! Nice and loose, and full of life. I understand the red/green thing - my color perception is a bit off, too, especially when you get two yellow or green colors next to each other that are the same value. Keep at it, your work is really strong!

[Robyn Wojo]

Nice job Rob. Great use of color. You're a phenom