Spirit Journey ©2009 Linda J. Edwards Watercolor 12" x 10"
“Spirit Journey”, my latest transparent watercolor painting (completed Jan. 6, 2009), was painted in response to a challenge to artists on the blogsite Different Strokes From Different Folks.
Artists are invited to paint in response to photographs posted biweekly by the blog host painter Karin Jurick. The paintings are submitted by the deadline and posted by Karin every two weeks. For the end of the year 2008 there was a special challenge, where the artists sent Karin photos of themselves. The photos were randomly sent back to different artists, for each to paint an interpretation.
When I was sent my photo to paint, “dsp39”, I was very struck by the image of a serious man with salt and pepper hair and blue gray eyes. Initially I experienced a general melancholy in the man’s face. I then realized that the two sides of the face elicited somewhat different emotional responses within me. Of course, there are subtle differences in the two halves of all peoples’ faces. But something about this face seemed remarkable in those differences to me. The left side seemed more somber and the right side more positive. The lid on the left eye had a slope that made it seem sadder, the left corner of the mouth seemed to reinforce the feeling. So I decided to separate the two sides of the face in my portrait. I thought about this a lot and wanted to find imagery to express separation and linkage between two aspects of a personality. Originally I had the two computer symbols for linkage and un-linkage in the composition. I also thought about the ups and downs we all traverse within our lives, the heartbreak and elation from multiple causes. So I decided to also use the broken and unbroken heart. Then I wanted to add some words to help explain these symbols. I thought about that quite a bit and realized that I was describing the journey our spirits take in this life within the vehicles of our physical bodies. I would use the words “spirit” and “journey” somehow within the composition. At the last minute the linkage symbols didn’t seem quite right, so they were erased and replaced with the infinity symbol, which reinforced my concept of spirit journey.
The next big challenge was how to use color and value to convey my feelings about the two “halves”. Color layering works so well in transparent watercolor. I painted the shadows on the left side in permanent blue and on the right in alizarin crimson. I then mixed scarlet lake and new gamboge for the overlying skin tone. The right side needed some coolness to make the shadows work. So I carefully layered cobalt blue in discrete places on the right. I didn’t want to add too much skin tone mixture to the left because I wanted to maintain the temperature difference to reinforce the feeling I was trying to convey. But the left was looking a little macabre, so I put on more skin tone and realized it was graying out nicely over the blue, so I was finally satisfied. I spent a lot of time with water media acetate trying out colors for the background and borders. I didn’t want to negate the carefully established temperature differences on the two faces by wrong color and value choices (color relativity effects).
Painting this portrait led me on quite a journey both artistically and emotionally. It was a lot of work and a lot of time. As I was finishing it Jan. 6th, I looked at the blogsite and saw everyone was doing fairly traditional portraits with a few exceptions. There was nothing there that looked anything like mine! And who was I to presume all these things about a stranger. On Jan. 7th (the deadline) I thought about slapping out a very traditional quick watercolor study of “dps39”, but I didn’t have time for that. So I took the plunge and hit the “send” button.
I’ve had some more thoughts about projecting all this on a stranger. I couldn’t have painted this painting unless I had experienced my own warm and cool journey through life. So in reality, I was painting my story and everyone’s story, elicited by the image of a serious man with salt and pepper hair and blue gray eyes.
Linda J. Edwards
January 8, 2009
