Grey's great

 

 What a smile

Black marker and watercolour

on Arches watercolour paper

3 x 5 inches

Barbara Muir © 2012

David Lobenberg is an artist whose work inspires
me again and again.  He's great with acrylic, fantastic
with watercolour, and can paint anything -- but is
especially captivating with portraits.  Lately he's
been doing spectacular work in watercolour -- dazzling
portraits.

David is a big believer in grey scale.  Working on value.
I have spent most of my life in value aversion therapy,
and find I do love thinking about value when it's attached
to a colour, but I want to free myself from all hold backs,
so why not plunge in I thought.

On the weekend I bought a tube of Payne's Grey, and
the other night did this small portrait of a friend, using
that colour exclusively (as David recommends) with
a black marker drawing underneath.  There will be more
of that.

In the late afternoon today we had real winter, and I drove
home from my long day at school clutching the steering
wheel.  We've been beyond lucky this winter -- I think
this is the first real snowfall yet, and only the second
day of freaky driving.  That's probably a bad sign for the
planet, but it has been a treat.


Have a working-on-your-values day.