making earth 2

Watercolor on 140 lb cold pressed paper.

One of the things I like most about the transition from autumn to winter in Chicago is the leaves that pile up underfoot and begin to decay, making earth (as Wendell Berry would say). That is the inspiration for this painting, the second in an open-ended series. In making this scene, I began with a single color field -- a mixture of blue, yellow, and red to make brown -- near the center of the surface, a sheet from an Arches watercolor block that I dampened thoroughly before applying pigment. I used brushes and water to nudge that field over the whole surface, adding blue, red, and yellow here and there while seeking (and provoking) well-ordered collisions dominated more by brown than by red, yellow, or blue, all on their way to the rich blue black of good earth.