Seattle trip

brown purse doodle, ink, 6x9, 2011

One of the sessions I attended at the conference was about Joseph Albers' style of teaching drawing.  He was most well known for "Homage to the Square", which was an exercise in creativity.  (if you keep the shape and texture constant, how many different ways can you paint it?)  It intrigued me to think about how many different ways can you combine the same type of line.  He said they worked a long time of elipses, and then he brought a bunch of pumpkins in to draw, and they found they already knew how to draw them.

On the plane ride home I was thinking about that and in looking at the purse on my lap, I noticed that it was made up of hundreds of slightly curved lines all about the same length.  I started to sketch it with a felt tip pen.  The picture above is how far I got before I needed to stop.

The pictures below were done yesterday (Saturday).  A sunny day in Seattle!  I spent about two hours at the water and a little over 2 hours at a park that had a lovely wooded ravine with a stream and bridges at the bottom.  My goal was to use as many sheets of my watercolor block as possible and not worry about making finished pieces.  I was trying to figure out how to make the marks.

Driftwood beach, 9x12, watercolor, 2011

Wooded ravine, watercolor, 9x12, 2011