Watercolours Vs. Watercolors

My fellow Humdrummers -

I hope you all enjoyed the title panel for the Humdrum Heights Moving Day Blues post, since I had a paint bucket full of fun creating it. It’s the first time I’ve touched watercolors in about ten years or so, and using the el-cheap-o kiddie variety no less. Just shows what you can do if you’re willing to work with the materials at hand, I suppose. That’s right, college boy, you can keep your fancy Grumbacher tube paints! I make my art with plastic pan paints so generic they don’t even have a name. You can keep your Cadmium Red and your Cerulean Blue, your Burnt Sienna and your Yellow Ochre. My paints come in Black, Blue, Turquoise, Magenta, Orange, Yellow, and, for some reason, More Yellow. (Oh, wait, maybe that used to be White?!) You work in watercolour, I work in watercolor. (The lack of a ‘u’ is an important class distinction, Richie Rich.) You have a dainty nibble of your watercress sandwich before returning to your acid-free well-stretched cold-pressed paper. I devour a crumbling wing of the Colonel’s secret recipe chicken right over my technique-limiting Bristol board. However, I do use a lovely Winsor-Newton Sceptre Gold #0 for my brush, which I hold with pinky finger aloft, so la-de-da. But, of course, that bit of sophistication is easily invalidated by dipping said brush into a Welch’s Horton-Hears-A-Who jelly jar.

Lest anyone doubt these words, I’ve included a little behind-the-scenes photo of the various elements that went into creating this panel. Remember, genius is rarely tidy.

Happy painting!

AdBeck,
just a reg’lar slob like youse