Yesterday’s session was a response to Wednesday’s session—a classic rendition of Jasper Johns’ admonition, “Do something. Do something to it. Do something else to it.”
I decided to return to the small sketchbook, use the oil pastels in the color palette I had selected for the chard, and make an abstract color study. The Tiles game in the New York Times games and puzzle app is one of my favorites, and the New Haven Tiles layout is one of my favorite layouts for that puzzle. The New Haven layout is based on Josef Albers’ “Homage to the Square” series. The puzzle involves layers of nested colored squares, just like the formal color studies of Albers, but you need to pick out the matching elements, eventually removing all the puzzle pieces. Also, I wanted to try piling up the layers of oil pastel to see how colors blended.
It took about an hour to fill the page with strokes of color. I also tried pushing and blending the layers of pastel into the paper using a small, hog-bristle, stencilling brush. It is what it is—a time-filler to complete the daily segment of the 100-day project. So far, I’m not super impressed with either the medium of oil pastels, nor the thin, firm-surfaced, obtrusively patterned sketchbook paper. (btw, I really need to confirm if this paper is Tiziano or Tiepolo. Fabriano makes both.) While I don’t need to make any masterpieces during these 100 days, I would really like to at least make some interesting and satisfying images, maybe improve my techniques at something, or even get ideas for a new direction to take.
Yesterday and today, I spent a few minutes looking at Pinterest tiles of photos, sketches, and drawings of fabulous bouquet still lifes. A couple of years ago, I did a colored pencil drawing of my niece’s wedding bouquet as a present for her. It turned out nicely, but it did take forever! Maybe I could play around with this notion, but working on a smaller sketchbook-sized scale, and using a looser, less rendered approach?
Tip for #the100dayproject: Sometimes you need more structure and parameters around the project. Limits and restrictions can inspire rule-breaking solutions. You can still experiment and see “what if” by taking it one step at a time.
