“When you paint a subject it is not a record but a statement about what particularly interests you as an artist.
“This might be the colour, texture, light, tone, edge values or pattern. It can be anything at all and only you know what that ingredient is … even if we have to delve a little to uncover it.”
Anne Blockley, Watercolour Workshop, p70
What interests me most changes, from subject to subject as well as with repeat visits to the same subject. It depends on how I’m feeling, the weather, the light, what materials I have to hand.
Pattern then colour or is it colour then pattern? Is it shape or pattern, and when does repeated shape become pattern (visualising a rocky shore)? Soft and lost edges. Lines in landscape, but not as hard edges.
Most of the time I don’t consciously think about it. Sometimes it’s something someone says that makes me realise. Sometimes it’s sitting sorting through a pile of paintings: failed and incomplete paintings can reveal things as much as successful ones.
There’s not a recipe for painting. It’s a whole cookbook’s worth.
