Magic Carpet Factory
Approx 11 x 14 watercolor on paper

This is an experimental spontaneous painting (from the imagination). It’s about line, shape, value, color, rhythm, dominance, repetition and only incidentally about a place in a faraway land where magic carpets are made. (That’s my tip of the hat to this week’s Illustration Friday theme - tales and legends.)

In this painting there’s an area of reserved linked whites and some patterned areas of dark against an overall middle value background. With so much going on I intentionally limited the colors to a warm red, a cool blue and a violet. This probably falls into the category of a “checkerboard” composition - lights against darks in a patterned way.

I painted this vertically (on an easel.) That’s why there are rough edges and uneven lines which I think contribute to the mood and air of mystery. Painting vertically also allowed the juicy paint to drip and granulate as it ran, creating interesting unexpected patterns. For example, the balcony railing was “printed” with the edge of a flat brush instead of being neatly drawn slowly and precisely with a narrow brush. I thought it made it look more like old wrought iron. If I had painted it flat, and more slowly it would have given me more control, but that would have defeated the purpose of the experiment.
Exercises like these are a lot of fun to do and will challenge you to stretch and think. So, now and then, go out for kung pao chicken or lamb vindaloo - you can always come back to hamburgers and apple pie.