Mood Indigo and Hooker's Green jungle
Dear Nikki/Dear Sarah--Day 427 of our daily drawing exchange
Hi Nikki,
I was thinking about our conversation around colour choices (orange/blue) and wanted to explore doing something with only one colour. Using a credit card. Interesting effect.
Hope you are almost back to your pre-virus self. 75 percent Nikki has more energy than most of the rest of us!
XO S
Hello Sarah -
Well, your blue experiment (tall ships heading off to sea? a burnt out forest in a mid-winter dawn?) so appealed to me, I went off in search of acrylic paint and a credit card…
I almost picked up the orange, then pulled my hand away from the yellow and selected a tube of Hooker’s Green. [If my quick online research is to be believed, Mr. Hooker was a botanical artist who needed a particular shade of green for foliage. The original formula mixed Prussian blue and gamboge (a gum resin), but it seems there were some issues with the long-term stability of the pigment. Today’s versions may not be identical to his, but there’s no question, this is the colour I’d reach for if I were in search of a leafy green.]
I think the jungle vibes of Hundred Years of Solitude have not quite dissipated.
What a fun technique! I am going to revisit this, next time with a bit less paint (turns out you don’t need a lot - things got thick and messy and I wound up pressing this page onto another one to make a print of sorts with all the excess…). I found it hard to resist drawing recognizable shapes with the corner of the credit card…
The desire to find shapes, patterns, and meaning must run deep…
Feeling MUCH better today - appetite is returning, which is helpful. Nikki-meter is over 90%. Can’t ask for much better than that!
The image, btw, is from an article in The Paris Review by Katy Kelleher (who may or may not be this Katy Kelleher) about not one, but two William Hookers. It includes several paintings using the colour, and not just for foliage.
Nikki