What about a tryptic?

This is where I started. Just letting the watercolors and paper guide me.

We wear masks to hide our emotions. This is what came from my fingers and unconscious.

We hide our emotions and other things because we are afraid.
 

This is what is behind the mask. Fear, jealousy, failure, being lost, trying to climb to a higher place but fear gets in the way, growth is thwarted, oh no, there is no hope.

Step 2. Spirituality makes its presence. Heaven or Hell? A church stain glass window. A tree that has roots, but no growth. 

Step 3.  Let's face our fears. There are so many--Snakes and sin and jealousy and betrayal. Spiders and skeletons and secrets, Oh My!

Step 3.  Let's start again. 

Before committing paint to paper, let's plan this out a bit. Only fears.

I am frustrated because I want this to be 3D. I want to build a mask and put the fears on the inside and on a blank outside, I want to put the words to the poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar, a Black Poet (1872-1906), "We Wear the Mask"

We Wear the Mask
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

We wear the mask that grins and lies. 

It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes--

This debt we pay to human guile;

With torn and bleeding hearts we smile, 

And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be over-wise,

In counting all our tears and sighs?

Nay, let them only see us, while

     We wear the mask.

We smile, but O great Christ, our cries

To thee from tortured souls arise.

We sing, but oh the clay is vile 

Beneath our feet, and long the miles;

But let the world dream otherwise, 

    We wear the mask!

Final process

 We are now working on our final studio watercolor. Our piece will be graded on a rubric by our peers, ourselves and our professor. 
Studio Rubric: Final Watercolor Project

Criteria	Points	Comments
Evidence of experimentation with the watercolor medium. Creative exploration and understanding of what the materials are capable of through demonstrated techniques.	/40
Content: ability to integrate metaphorical themes and concepts into your artwork.	/20
Skill: attention to detail, presentation, and overall design. Effective use of color. Evidence of effort and scale.	/20
Written reflection on artwork. Evidence of research. Creative	/20

Name: _________________________________ Date:_____________

Total                              /100
What is something you would like me to know about your artmaking process that might not be evident in your final project?

2.  If you were to do this again, what would you do differently and why?

3.  What is something about your artwork that you are pleased with and why?

________________________________________
Here is where I start. Words. Lists. Then I group and eliminate. 

 

I started with masks. Masks hide emotions. What are other things people hide?

WHO: Everyone

WHAT: See the list above.

WHERE: See the list on the right above.

WHEN: All the time, sometimes for years or a lifetime.

WHY: Fear.

What does fear look like? How can I paint fear? This is where I research lots and lots and lots of images. I think and think and think. Sometimes I sketch, but mostly think. And then I stop. I tell my brain "Brain, give me an answer to what FEAR looks like? Relate it to a mask is even better." 

We'll see what my brain comes up with in my next post. Wish me luck.

 Metaphorical Landscape

This was a tough one. I started with a space helmet, with a landscape reflected on the spherical glass. Then I tried a mythical landscape of different masks. I tried this several times, but never got what I wanted.

Next came a tree with eyes like masks. This was ok, but to get the masks to read, I overworked it. 

I looked at landscapes I had photographed and selected a ski image from Portillo, Chili, because it had lots of jagged rocks that I thought could look like faces or masks.

Then I went back to the first idea and tried again to make it work, but it, too got overworked.

Talking to my son, I got the idea of going for a specific mask--a spa facial mask. I tired several landscapes within the face, a jungle, a desert, a fantasy dystopian wasteland, finally a city. The first go, the city was coming through too strongly, so, I did a wash to soften it. 

 En Plein Air

Outside Hagerstown, Maryland, February 21, 2021. It was cold. I had to go in for coffee while the water/wash dried. I took it in with me because I was afraid it would freeze. I took some liberties because I chose to use analogous colors (yellow, green, blue). One of the houses in the scene was red. 

 On the mask theme. This one is Mayan during the pandemic. 

This week was a monochromatic version of our object as metaphor. I chose blue for sadness as an emotion to hide behind a mask. Usually the mask is a sunny smile, but the emotion it hides is blue or sadness.  

I tried to "loosen up" but it is still a bit fussy (overworked) for a watercolor.  I'll have to keep working at relaxing and trying to be quicker and more free with this medium.

I used quite a bit of masking for the dots of metal.

Here is a detail of the lips.