Other Notable Blogs

Cafe Unknown
Travel, History and Portland Oregon by Dan Haneckow

Jack Bog's Blog
By Jack Bogdanski of Portland, Oregon. (Like he needs any other introduction by now? -- A.B.C.)

For Portlanders Only
"Why buy a mattress anywhere else?"

Good Stuff NW
Featuring stuff that is good in the NW

LOST Magazine
LOST Magazine is an online monthly magazine that combines elements of many other literary, online, and national magazines with a singular mission--to reclaim in writing lost people, places, and things.

Mapes on Politics
Way West of the Beltway

Outside Is America
A journal about photography, roadtrips, trains and life, with occasional detours into movies, baseball, music, family and more.

The Photographers' Railroad Page
Good photos usually have good stories to go with them.... The goal of The Photographers' Railroad Page is to provide an outlet for top quality photographs and their story.

Portland Food & Drink
Throwing Ourselves on the Grenade of Bad Food to Save You

Portland Transport Blog
A Conversation About Access & Mobility in the Portland/Vancouver Region

PowellsBooks.Blog
Authors, readers, critics, media -- and booksellers

Rambling West
The musings of a farmer with a typewriter and camera

Stumptown Confidential
Documenting Portland, Oregon architecture, history, and culture through photos, postcards, and words.

The Unauthorized Observer
Observations on faith, photography, trains, baseball, the city where I live (Fullerton, Calif.), anything that I find funny (a lot of things) or irritating (some things) and various incidents involving friends and family.

Under the Weather
...the open road, fatherhood, family life, music, railroads, photography, popular and unpopular culture, sex, violence, religion, the oppression of consumerism and capitalism and the general bullshit that makes up modern life.

Urban Planning Overlord
A blog to counter the myths, lies, and demagoguery others use against sound city planning to further their own ends, fair and foul - but also to urge the profession itself to pull back from the occasional wretched PC exces.

VanPortlander
Living in Vancouver; working in Portland. I have some thoughts.

Whiskey, Texas
...life and experiences in Texas and the Southwest. Recurring themes: Photography, railroads, fading ads / ghost signs, fallen-flag railroad logos, boxcars, bicycling, Texas music, pop culture, sports, road trips, literature, kids and family.

World Scott
The Travel Writing and Photography of Scott Lothes

Blegs & Bargains

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Sunday, January 14, 2007

After a long absence from painting, I've returned to it. With what promises to be a fiscally tight term, I needed something to occupy my "me time" with that did not cost much. Additionally, I needed down time, time that was truly dedicated to doing something other than working on school projects or homework. Both of these led me back to the brush case this Saturday last.

Speaking of, my brushes are quite a mess. Frayed, some of them. Some of them got mangled from non-watercolor uses. Some of them are simply getting old. How I'd love to have one of those big, pure Kolinsky sables! But wow. Those cost as much as a motel room or an Amtrak ticket. I could justify it, eventually. If I had the cashflow. But I don't. So I make due.

Making due is a serious constraint on my work, I've noticed. For example, in one painting I have just begun, the sketching portion suffered severely from my inability to keep a piece of paper taped to a door while I projected a slide onto it. Frustrating, as I held up the paper with my left hand and hurriedly sketched with my right. But then these little imperfections are part of the very character of the painting, part of what separates the painting from the photo it began with. Which brings up another serious issue, that a poor photograph can make a great painting. And perhaps, vice-versa?

I'm coming to like working larger. Big 22x30 sheets are unlikely to see scissors of mine in the future. The scale allows finer detail, a finer perception of precision, and less percentage of the image hidden by a theoretical matting. But it really need bigger brushes! And for large areas like skies, it needs far more skill and rapidity in washes!

My paper, speaking of, is running short, though I'm still finding working on an oversized clipboard to be ideal. I can move it anywhere I wish, though if I ever do plein-air work it may have to be with the benefit of the car.

Now that I am back with the brush again, I have to say there is a slight satisfaction from feeling it all come together again subconsciously. Watercolor for me is almost like an old, irreplaceable friend, one whom you can not talk to in ages and then pick up with exactly where you left off. And that is the best kind of friendship at all.

Labels: Watercolor

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