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defectivebarbie — Nostalgia
Published: 2014-04-10 19:00:14 +0000 UTC; Views: 7581; Favourites: 160; Downloads: 0
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Description
(working title, feel free to suggest)18 x 24" (46 x 61 cm)
watercolor on paper
I've stripped away the bright colors and additions (of my usual style), to experiment with simpler more raw imagery. Let me know what you think.
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Comments: 10
Thanks for the fav! Your paintings are so amazing and emotive. Keep up the great work!
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Very expressive eyes. Ok here's my question about the title: is nostalgia what you felt when you painted this ? OR, (and these are not your only two choices lol) OR is nostalgia what she is feeling? Or is this a self portrait, painted live in a mirror so its both? I'm full of questions it seems but I looked into her eyes for a good long while, searching for clues to what she's about. And I don't see nostalgia in her eyes. I see a dilemma, a gentle conflict; she is tempted to explore someone she has met, but she's wary of the complication that could introduce into her life. She's going back and then yes and then no, moving forward into beauty and magic feelings and possibility and temptation and hope, then back to security, compassion for her current partner adn what they have built, and yet, they have spoken at length about this kind of thing being ok, the freedom of it being important to preserve, and yet he'll be hurt more than he expects, and yet, growing pains, and yet,,, So the title is dilemma, or conflicted, or temptation, or
This is beautifully effective to minimize all detail except the eyes and the detail level fades rapidly as we go out ward from them. The way you've caught the eyes is , well, eye-catching, if you pardon the punning.
I love the style of your watercolors in general. I am curious- and quite naive in this medium and the terminology- but what is the tendency for vertical lines- is it just your choice to let it run down to creat this effect? or is there some kind of partial grid you lay out first? and if it is dripping or running, then the one called "unfinished" di you paint it upside down? Do you always paint on an easel? My dad is an accomplished watercolor painter and he sometimes works on his laying flat.
Is this one and the others of this same beauty- self portrait by any chance? just curious.
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I chose "Nostalgia" because she looks candy-colored to me, like a personification of the "rose-colored glasses" we use to look back on certain memories of the past. She has a subtle air of not being what she seems, innocent yet artificial somehow. Maybe because she's purposefully not fully formed & kind of evanescent I find it difficult to grasp a title, like trying to trap fog in a butterfly net.
I don't normally paint on an easel, but since the paper is large I had to work mostly on an easel. Theres a subtle aesthetic difference in the way watercolor behaves when its being painted with on a horizontal/flat surface vs. vertical/easel, I prefer the flat but I'm glad I pushed myself to use the easel. There's no grid, I chose to let the paint drip that way as a compositional component- as if they are real people, wet with paint & emerging from the paper, or the paint is some kind of energy, made visible, thats flowing from them.
All & none of them are a self portrait, but none of them are painted from a photo (or from a mirror) of myself.
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This piece makes me think of "Cold Tones" 
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