Research by doing

How did he DO that? How often have you thought that? Lots of artists are out there doing lots of artsy things and wouldn't it be great to have their various tricks and techniques and approaches in your own bag of tricks, to modify and employ as appropriate? Sure would! 

That's what I was focused on yesterday. Alvaro Castagnet has a very loose (my wife says messy) and dark style. Quite impressionistic. Exactly  the opposite of how my art style originally developed. Well, to me that means I've got a weakness. I know how to "do" detailed and precise but not loose and free form. Which means it's time to remedy that failing. Yesterday what I did was  take a painting of Alvaro's and said to myself "Flip this old painting over and see what you can do on the backside. Try and replicate Alvaro's work."

Here's the result. Alvaro on top and Crow on the bottom. I didn't expend much time on my pencil sketch since that went against my "Try and be fast and loose" mission. Hence everything is a bit off in terms of where and how big. But ... did I capture something?

I think the answer is a bit of yes and a bit of no. Loose and suggestive - check. But my own painting, taken by itself, has an issue with the three motorcyclists on the right. They're too small for the foreground space they're occupying. Of course, I wasn't really worrying about that then BUT now that it's done I think I should have. Another issue is my background wash. I've got a LOT of yellow in that sky whereas Alvaro's is much more washed out. And his watery and misty look is much watery and misty than mine. Something that's clearly related to the water/pigment ratios and the paper's level of dryness. I know  I was quite unhappy with my water mister's performance (and thus stopped using it) and so my paper was definitely on the dry side more than I wanted. 

Anyway, I'm very happy with the overall experiment and plan to wash and repeat until I feel that I've got a solid sense of "loose and drippy art". And I'll be sure to fill you in on the progress as it happens!