Way back in the 1980’s I took a class from Marie Wordell and she had a live model for us to do one day. The model was wearing a very colorful costume. It was a Spanish costume, so you can imagine how many colors it had and a colorful head scarf besides.
Oh no! I forgot my palette, but had a tube of black watercolor paint in my basket of equipment. (my gear). Well, it was a matter of painting the essence of what I was seeing and not have to try to report every color on the model and I felt that I did the best job in class of all the students.
This painting sold, and the owner moved to the east coast and I never got a photo of it. The owner was kind enough to send me a photo and so here it is, and as you can see, it is not correctly taken, but better than nothing. I don’t even know the name of the model, and I don’t have a picture of her in class to compare how well I got a likeness of her, but that didn’t matter. It was more fun just doing what watercolor does, and as one of my mentors, Edgar Whitney would say, “Watercolor is a beautiful lie!” In other words, you don’t have to tell the truth and report all the facts, just let the watercolor do what it likes to do. I love the way watercolor behaves. It is a lot of fun once you become acquainted with its character.
