The listening effect
Black marker and watercolour on
watercolour paper
10 x 12 inches
Barbara Muir © 2012
Today has been quite the day. TomorrowI start a new commission, so I'm heading off
to bed. But here is a Payne's grey Skype
painting. In a noisy cafeteria, the subject
listens to the call through earphones (the
buds). When I paint in Payne's Grey (I say
that like I've been doing it for years -- and
in fact when I was at OCAD, my favorite
medium was watercolour and pen and ink
drawings with nib pens and India ink) I get
lost in Value thoughts. Today I enjoyed the
watercolour essence of the medium and the
value happened effortlessly.
But honestly -- much as I am enjoying working
in values, I feel terribly sorry for all of the students in
workshops all across this country and the
world, religously doing value studies thinking
it will make them into artists. Nothing will
do that, and don't you remember the first
time someone let you take a big brush and put
colour on a page? I am willing to bet that's
why we're still painting today. So thank you
Mrs. Jordon, my kindergarten teacher who
introduced me to big paper and brilliant tempra
paints.
My mother and I were laughing the other
day about the time I was doing a pen and
ink drawing in my room using indelible
India ink, and spilled a whole bottle on the rug.
It made a gorgeous, huge black stain on a
lovely sea blue rug. My mother got my brothers to
move the bed and the rug so that my father
wouldn't see the spill and be upset. He
didn't and he wasn't, but I know that when
we left that house the very nice rug with the
big ink stain did not move with my parents.
Have a hiding-the-ink-stains day.
