Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Mud Puddle

Yesterday I took my car to the shop because it needed an inspection. The rain was pouring down. There wasn't much space in the waiting room. So I sat under the awning out back between an old rusty engine and a forklift.

While I waited, I sketched the mud puddle beside me. The rain streamed off the corrugated roof  and splashed the water, making big bubbles. The puddle was a sea of overlapping ripples.

I used watercolor and water-soluble colored pencils, scratching through the white vertical lines when I got home.
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23 comments:

  1. SteveMay 18, 2011 at 7:50 AM

    This is seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary; a reminder to welcome small-scale wonders into our lives. Thanks.

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  2. Tom HartMay 18, 2011 at 10:16 AM

    Masterful! A subject like this could easily have been unrecognizable, without a verbal explanation, but you really pulled it off. Somehow, I think that the corner piece of masonry helps to identify the subject, though I'm not exactly sure why.

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  3. AnonymousMay 18, 2011 at 10:32 AM

    ad

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  4. AnonymousMay 18, 2011 at 10:33 AM

    Sorry for ^

    i love your blog!

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  5. Torbjörn KällströmMay 18, 2011 at 10:38 AM

    Very cool :) I went out to paint today but gave up and went home when it started raining because I couldn't find a good shelter with a nice view. Maybe I shouldn't have been so picky though...

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  6. David ApatoffMay 18, 2011 at 10:38 AM

    Absolutely beautiful.

    James, I will never go to Jiffy Lube again without at least a pencil and paper. I always wondered how the heck you can be so darn prolific. I guess now I know.

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  7. Mary ByromMay 18, 2011 at 10:55 AM

    Awesome! I love it!

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  8. MoishMay 18, 2011 at 12:23 PM

    very inspirational, both to art and to life in general.

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  9. AnonymousMay 18, 2011 at 12:23 PM

    Steve said it: you saw the extraordinary in the ordinary. Reminds me the watercolor I’ve done when I was waiting for a repair at “garage Jose”. His stuff was considered as “visual pollution” by the locals, but I liked the “plein air ballet” of cars on lifting platforms:

    http://www.watercolor.fr/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/garage_jose.jpg

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  10. Maia SandersMay 18, 2011 at 12:56 PM

    I love this. I live in California where it is normal to go to a carwash every two weeks and have a gang of people swarming over the car for 20 minutes, doin all sorts of jobs. I have a large book containing six years of carwash guy sketches. best life drawing gesture poses ever! nice to see I am not alone in the waiting room art school.

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  11. Chris DunnMay 18, 2011 at 1:08 PM

    Lovely!

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  12. UnknownMay 18, 2011 at 2:13 PM

    "Search for the small things, giving joy in life."
    Confucius

    Hey, I have this on my calendar, depicting a dew drop apple tree blossom this week.

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  13. AnonymousMay 18, 2011 at 2:34 PM

    The headline made me think of that old blog post of yours about "the mud debate". I guess this one is a strong argument for the position that mud in a painting doesn't have to be a bad thing ...!

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  14. UnknownMay 18, 2011 at 2:45 PM

    "Mud debate"
    reminds me of Delacroix, the painter and master of color, who once exclaimed: "give me a piece of excrement on the street - I'll take it up and paint the flesh of Venus out of it!"

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  15. AnonymousMay 18, 2011 at 7:58 PM

    fantastic Jim!

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  16. Cindy SkillmanMay 18, 2011 at 9:37 PM

    I had just read the bit in your book about how mud is the sauce of a painting, so that was the first thing that came to mind, seeing this. You've turned a scene most folks would hurry past into a work of art worthy of hanging. Lovely

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  17. lumographiaMay 19, 2011 at 5:19 AM

    I'd love to actually see you paint something like this. Ever thought of having someone film you while working?

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  18. MrCachetMay 19, 2011 at 7:45 AM

    James,

    Found these little tidbits (starting @ $2M) this AM. Thought of you. http://fineart.ha.com/common/view_item.php?Sale_No=6061&LotIdNo=1001&type=around-comicnews-tem051911

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  19. Dangerous DonMay 19, 2011 at 8:44 AM

    You've changed forever the way I look at mud puddles.

    Love the bubbles. And I especially love that murky yellow color in the upper right-hand corner -- which seems to capture perfectly what mud puddles really look like.

    I'm sure the folks over in the MUDDY COLORS blog will appreciate this.

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  20. LucyMay 19, 2011 at 9:36 AM

    You are an amazing artist. You can do anything.

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  21. James GurneyMay 19, 2011 at 11:31 AM

    Wow. Thanks so much for all your encouraging words. I wish I were as enlightened and connected as you give me credit for.

    Actually, I had just erased a couple of lame attempts to draw the forklift (visible at extreme right), and turned to the puddle because I thought it would be easier. The more I got into the puddle (so to speak) the more I thought about how I admire the work of the unsung heroes of effects animation——in films like Fantasia's Nutcracker Suite.

    It's funny how I end up having the best time sketching while stuck somewhere: laundromats and airports and such. With no pressure to match my picture to a preconceived image, I'm much freer to really look at the stuff I usually overlook, or as Cindy says, the scenes we hurry past.

    Mr Cachet, that's an amazing fossil for sale. I hope it goes to a museum.

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  22. Christopher ThornockMay 25, 2011 at 12:24 AM

    Great little sketch!

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  23. Dicing with DragonsMay 30, 2011 at 6:55 PM

    Beautiful! I love watercolor. Never used the pencils though. Just the cakes and the tube paints.

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