Mary Lawler Blog

Experiment with gold gouache paint.

Recently I bought a tube of gold paint, Winsor & Newton Designers Gouache Gold. I did this little experiment with the gold paint in my sketch book. I used the gold straight up, and also mixed the gold with additions of yellow, white and orange. To my eye, the gold by itself looks more copper than gold, but the hue depends on the light and the angle of the light. What you see is a scanned image of my sketchbook page.

Lovers. color sketch.

St. Nick. 2nd version.

Datura sketches. pen and watercolor.

While I did these little sketches, I realized that I have some divergent intentions going, and have to sort them out. Do I want to make an accurate rendering of the datura, or do I want to make a painting expressive of my response to the datura? Do I want to include background?

Landscape. Sketch in watercolor and pen.

Prickly Pear Cactus. Thumbnail sketch.

 

 

Prickly Pear Cactus. Thumbnail sketch. Pencil on Aquabee sketchbook paper. 4" x 6".

I walked in the arroyo this morning, and saw that many cacti are just about ready to bloom. We had some good rain in Santa Fe last weekend, almost like an early monsoon rain, and flowers and cacti in the arroyo look happy because of it.