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| Untitled - Windson Newton Watercolor, Acrylic Paint Pen, Arches Watercolor Paper - 26" x 40 " |
This new drawing has been knocking around the studio for a few weeks. Many people seem to like it and ask about it's precedents, which are many. Architectural drawing, and specifically perspective drawing figures into its making. The slight skewed grid was created using an old standby for perspective drawing - by definition the diagonal lines connecting the nodes should all 'vanish' to one point on a distant horizon. I use this rule to help me establish a simple grid on the paper.
Additionally a few years ago I made a series of drawings using watercolor paint and rubbing alcohol, which when applied on top of the freshly wet watercolor, expands and resists the color. Which to me looked very much like galaxies and stars.
But quite frankly, the biggest influence of all, certainly the one that reaches back the furthest for me, would be the movie 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind', the Steven Spielberg movie from 1977. I know I sat though it twice the first time I saw it. But what very much impressed me about the movie at the time was the simple and elegant way the makers used light to create the illusion of something real and three dimensional. The early scenes of the initial encounters with the smaller UFOs were thrilling for me and I like to occasionally think of a drawing like this as an alien space craft or at least the stars aligning in some unreal way.
