Some Thoughts on Paperwork Part 3 of ? - A Mini Project

This is an example of how I used what I learned from Zoom art and applied it on a troublesome Letter Journal spread last week. 

In one of the private group Zooms, (is this word supposed to be capitalised?) we had to draw awfully complicated Paris buildings, one goal being to find what we want to focus on and what to omit. I drew blind lines. (I'm not calling them contours because I never draw only the contours.) When we were free to do whatever we chose later that hour, I blind-drew Vincent's irises, the subject I chose for the LJ spread. 

However, I realised the irises are so new/strange to me, (copying anything of Vincent's, in fact,) I couldn't tell which part of mine corresponded to which of his. Since I intended to colour them, I had to draw one, colour one, and move onto the next. After the Zoom session, I continued to draw the contours more of less blindly, occasionally looking and counting the number of petals, etc, not worrying when interesting parts were missing or in the wrong position. And then I drew/painted one iris in the journal. 

The left page, I thought, look more like Vincent, but if I weren't worried about likeness, I like the one on the right more. 

But I wanted to make it somewhat Vincent-like. I liked the last practice on the right the best. In order to better express the jaggedness/uneveness of his contour, I used a chopstick to draw the navy lines after all the other colours were laid down. The trick was not to stick the chopstick in the water bucket in between use, but to keep it dry. 

This is the final version in the swap journal. The colours look less true compared to my practices, (too much white, and substantially less of variations of blues,) but I think it looks sufficiently jittery and restless like Vincent's. Note the tiny hands at the bottom; the theme of his journal was "Fairy World". 

My interest in Vincent is his life/person, his era, friendships and post-Impressionism, his letters, and then his portraits. I found making a tiny not-exactly-copy of one flower extremely time-consuming and labour-intensive. I didn't like this for my paperwork, even though I haven't minded this kind of fussiness on the loom in the past. It's unlikely this kind of drawing/painting will become one of my repeat subject. Still, I'm glad I did it. Although... I might do a sunflower. And would definitely consider portraits. 

Something lucky happened in the final version, too. I used somewhat watered-down gouache for colouring in; (I had to mix colours and when I do, I tend to add water to make sure they are completely mixed, which wasn't necessary in this case,) on inexpensive 110g paper. In contrast, the journal spread was covered with a sticky substance, so I applied a layer of gesso. It prevented the paint from soaking straight through, and allowed me to mix/layer paint on top of it. And because I can't gesso evenly, it had a little texture, useful when imitating oil paint with watered-down gouache. 

I understand in the art world, "copying" has a specific definition.What I do sometimes is to draw by looking at, but not try to make an accurate copy of, someone’s work. I usually start with blind or partly blind lines, and sometimes colour them in. All very quick and uncomplicated. By trying to imitate? (i.e. mimicking by referencing??) I must be looking in a different way, carefully, and learn more than just looking/staring/observing. And if you repeat copying as many times as I do some paintings, there are always new things to discover. I like that. 

Next, please.