Marie WheelerThe LAHL artist of the week is Wassily Kandinsky and he has traditionally been one of my favorites.
I remember a visit to either the Guggenheim or MOMA in my late teens and I bought a journal with a Kandinsky print on it. I don’t remember which one, though it may have been Heavy Red. I liked that journal a lot. There is something about his work that has always resonated with me and while I can’t put my finger on it, it pleases me to emulate it.
The Inspo
The composition I chose for inspiration was Circles in a Circle from 1923.
I think what drew me to this was the intersecting lines of color and the bubbles of overlapping and mixing color. It’s funny to me that I retained only a minimal sense of this in my piece.
My Kandinsky – Inspired Journal Piece
To produce this piece, I used 140 lb cold press watercolor paper, my Sennellier watercolors, Windsor & Newton Permanent White gouache, my Inktense pencils and Micron pens in size 05 and 08.
The Process
I first taped down my paper on a backer; I don’t have gator board, so I just use some old heavy mat board with a heavy coat of clear gloss medium. I then laid down my general design in pencil and put a wash of yellow across the entire page. I used the watercolor to put down the main colors and if I needed to put color over color, I added a bit of the gouache to the watercolor to make a creamy, opaque paint. I added some details and highlights with the Inktense pencils and outlined with the micron pens. Lastly, I added some additional lines and groupings of three dots.
This is much more minimal than the inspiration, but I like the way it turned out.
As an aside, this was my first attempt with gouache and I quite like it! I hadn’t even heard of it this time last week, but I stumbled onto the YouTube videos from James Gurney and knew I had to try this medium. Gouache (said like gwash, like Gwar) is often explained as an opaque watercolor and one of my main irritations with watercolor is having to leave light spots (and forgetting!). This fixes that issue for me.
Gurney seems like a neat and talented guy and I’ve devoured most of his videos. I highly recommend dropping into that rabbit hole. I’m also thinking of making a tripod topper as he has to take into the field. But that’s a post for another day.
