By Ali Simon-Fox
While certainly excited by the idea of this project, I wasn’t sure what to do with it. I figured I would incorporate my interests into a project that both let me work in my forte and pushed me beyond the boundaries of my comfort zone.
I decided on trying watercolor. I could never really paint well, so watercolors had always been out of the question; if you can’t work well with acrylic, what’s the likelihood of being able to paint with watercolors? But I felt that I should put myself up to some sort of challenge with this project, if for nothing else than the fact it would give me something to write about, so I embarked on my first attempt at watercolors since that compulsory middle school art class.
Upon analysis of previous failures, I came to the conclusion that a large part of why they turned out so poorly (or rather, didn’t make it past a few strokes before being discarded) was because I had no game plan. To avoid a similar fate this time, I drew a rough sketch of what I wanted. I know a lot of people who draw a rough sketch then start with a blank canvas; it seemed more pragmatic to me to just paint on the sketch. The problem with watercolor is that you can’t just paint over things as you can with acrylic or tempera, so, aside from making sure I used the pencil very lightly, I didn’t shade anything in the sketch. Instead, I blocked things out by color, breaking down the picture I planned to create into geometric shapes.
After I had made my pencil contour I began to actually paint. Since it had been a long time and they are a notoriously runny medium, I was rather tentative with both the amounts of paint and water used and the boldness of my strokes. I made relatively tight movements in regards to the actual rhino; I wish I had had access to smaller brushes to create finer detail, but I used the smallest brushes I could find, and I at least tried to make the monks and temple on the rhinoceros’ back more than tiny blobs. The background I was considerably more lax with.
This is my finished project:
Even though I generally trend more towards the edge of realism, I figured I’d give whimsy a go this time. In terms of artwork, I tend to equate any thing fantastical with animals. I especially have a fondness for drawing Pachyderms. This fondness has translated into a relative expertise, since we tend to draw/cut/photograph/paint etc. what we like (as evidenced below):
I figured I would continue pursuing this fascination with giant, wrinkly ungulates for this project. Since I was playing with a new medium, I thought I should pick a topic I both enjoy and have (albeit at teeny tiny amount of) experience illustrating. Since I found the idea of just a plan rhinoceros kind of boring, I decided to combine it with my interest in eastern-central Asian life and art by making the rhinoceros’ humps into mountains in which a Buddhist monastery was situated. While the monastery was based on pictures I had seen of one located in Bhutan*, the sky was inspired by pictures my friend had taken in Nepal. I was shocked by the sunset being in all primary colors; though there are definitely some wild sunsets here, they are usually oranges and pinks and are more blended than the ones in the photographs I was shown. I figured that Nepal and Bhutan were geographically proximate enough that to pair the monastery and the sunrise would not be too geographically anachronistic.
Anyways, I like rhinos. I like sunsets. I like things that evoke that Shangri-La vibe. And so I made this painting. I hope you like it. I think it was cool of professor Jablonka to give us a final project that allowed such for such open-ended ideas and self-expression, and while a bit sad to see this seminar coming to a close, I’m very excited to see everyone’s presentations tomorrow.
*I was painting mainly based on Paro Taktsang, which is this Dzong-style temple complex wedged into the site of a Himalayan mountain. It’s actually some of the coolest architecture ever. here’s a picture of it ->
