Temptation, Google, A Metaphor

Looking back at this a couple of days later: Often when I paint from life I tend to be tightly focused, only the shapes and colors before me occupying my mind.

However when working from memory/imagination, such as here, all sorts of things pass through my head and end up in the painting. I started with a flick of the fan brush indicating her nose, a few more lines brought back the girl I painted in my 'quake' sumi-e rendering last year. Looking at the resulting image start to form got me thinking about the temptation of Eve and the garden/jungle started growing around her.

Thinking about the Temptation of course led to musings about the 'tree of knowledge of good and evil' leading to thoughts about 'decision trees' often used to visualize computer code and then thoughts of Google -a present day 'tree of knowledge of good and evil.'

So! For me all these things (and more) are wrapped in to this little work, but of course, what you see, if anything, depends on what cords it strikes in your mind, which is as art (or attempts at art) should be.

A bit on the technical side: I really don't prefer to see watercolors isolated under glass, not ever glare free glass. Subsequently I've been trying various glazes and varnishes to add some protection. I don't like the spray finishes for a number of reasons including inherent plugged nozzles strong odors.

On this one I got a protective coat a bit closer to my desires. First I lightly sprayed it with hair spray (no plugged nozzles and minimum odor [I also use hair spray as a fixative on my charcoal drawings]) which locked the watercolors down tight enough that I could apply an acrylic varnish with a brush. As may who may view this know, watercolors tend to dry lighter and less vivid than they appear when being wetly applied. An overglaze can bring back that 'wet' appearance.

OK this is maybe not archival but as I paint purely for pleasure, not for profit not posterity. I can afford to experiment and play like this and… it's a lot of fun!


Watercolor (Createacolor Bricks) on Canson's 140 pound cold pressed paper. 12 by 10 inches.