Embracing Watercolor Whimsey
On Flying Pigs and Bleeding Frogs
I’d finished my drawing a bit earlier than others, so Professor Born suggested I spend time “improving it.” It was a pencil drawing of a pile of rocks he’d set in the center of the table. I wasn’t sure how to improve upon a boring ol’ pile of rocks, so I added little flying pigs to my drawing. I got a bad grade and a comment on the back of my work, something along the lines of working on realism and value instead of whimsical doodles. I never did finish my art minor.
Last week I sat down to paint what I’d envisioned as a semi-realistic watercolor illustration of a toad and toadstool. I saw it in my head with the perfect use of light and white space and detail. It looked so real in my head that I could have gotten poisoned by the toadstool and a wart from touching the toad. The shadows were perfect. . . in my head.
I drew it out. I set down the first layer and let it dry. I set down the second layer. I set down the third layer.
Hmm.
I got to what I thought was the end and said to myself, “I should spend time improving this.” I added value, some texture, and some splatters for visual interest.
It was a good idea, except I added value with warm primaries and bright red splatter. Realism, this was not. In fact, with those red splatters it looked an awful lot like the toad was bleeding out after doing a vicious battle with an unknown, yet mortal, enemy. There was narrative there in my bloody little illustration, but it certainly wasn’t any kind of realistic.
The painting sat on my desk for one day, then another, then another. I didn’t paint anything else. It was irksome.
But today I embraced the whimsey. I sat back down to tone down the red, the fear of overworking overshadowed by the irksome, bloody toad. While I was sitting there I thought, “Why not try?” and obscured some of the red splatters with some green grasses. For the love of whimsey, I pulled out my metallic gold and started highlighting the toad’s spots to bring him closer to being my focal point. I added more. I added polka dots. I added more. I made some swirly, spiral elements in the grasses with white gauche. I added more gold and voila! Eureka! Holy Moses! I had made a whimsical representation of a toad and toadstool.
As overworked as the painting may be, and as mentally and emotionally tiresome as this painting has been, it worked out when I embraced my whimsey, when I said something colloquial, and when I used my instincts. I didn’t follow the rules that should have worked, but something clicked when I gave up trying to control everything and just embraced what it wanted to be instead of what I thought it would be.
And man. I can only imagine how much better my life will be when I start applying that rule to more aspects of my life: Embrace what “it” wants to be, or what “it” can be, instead of what I thought “it” should be.
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