Look for other examples of mixed media pictures such as Henry Moore’s Pink and Green Sleepers (page 23) which uses wax resist, and John Marin’s The Singer Building (page 145) which uses pencil and charcoal.

Henry Moore 1941 Pink and green sleepers

I came across the series of drawings by Henry Moore (English, 1898 – 1986) to which this drawing belongs during the drawing course. The scenes depict people in the shelters during World War II bombings. This drawing was made using graphite, ink, gouache and wax on paper. It is very sombre in atmosphere and captures the Angst of the times. But there’s also a sense of comfort in seeing the two people in company and protected.

Technically, the watercolours are very pale and stand back, the painting is dominated by the tonality and the textured surfaces created through scratching.

Tate Britain http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/moore-pink-and-green-sleepers-n05713

John Marin 1921 The Singer Building

This painting by John Marin (American, 1870 – 1953) dates from the early Twenties of the 20th century and depicts a building in New York. It is very energetic and loose. The media were watercolour, charcoal, and black conté crayon on wove paper. Interesting is how these elements fall apart and seem to explode with energy. In the same way, the drawing is not tight and accurate, but fragmented and sketchy.

Philadelphia Museum of Art http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/50636.html

Having looked at the two suggested mixed media works, I was slightly unsure how to continue this research, because “mixed media” is a wide field and I did not know which artists to look at. I wanted to avoid getting back to my usual suspects and therefore did a Google search on the keywords “Mixed media” and “Mixed media painting”. One of the first hits was the website of Kellie Day, a contemporary mixed media artist. I was enchanted and surprised by this chance find as her style is very close to my understanding of mixed media today.

Kellie Day, a contemporary American mixed media artist

I’m including the first paintings I saw as a reminder, because they attracted me to stay on the website and look further into this artist’s work. I find her paintings light, colourful, energetic and very friendly.

    

     

There’s a short video “Peek into my studio” where she presents herself and her methods. She considers herself a mixed media artist and works in various techniques on canvas: Drawing, painting and collage, using multiple transparent and opaque layers of paint and ink. Kellie Day is a trained artist with a background in fine arts and illustration. She works from photos which are displayed on a wide-screen laptop that is placed next to a huge, high working table. This is quite similar to my setting when I work from photos, except that my studio space is tiny, compared to hers, with a much smaller and lower table. What I particularly liked was seeing that she works standing, not sitting at her desk! This confirmed my idea that standing is better when making art, because it is somehow liberating, it permits broader arm movements and helps to let go of fiddling with details.

Then, big surprise, there was actually a painting of sunflowers among her works! It is really beautiful and much lighter than my sunflower paintings so far. It’s a bit like my pencil sunflower sketch translated into paint.

Pablo Picasso, from the Guitar series (Moma Exhibition)

There were no more interesting hits in that search, so I went back to Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881 – 1973) because I remembered that he employed and combined many different media and was very inventive. My Google search turned up a link to an exhibition at the Moma New York in 2011, showing a series of increasingly abstract works around the topic of a guitar.

The works mostly combine drawing, collage and paint on canvas. Although no watercolour was used, I think they are inspiring even 100 years after they have been made. I see the beginnings of cubism in them and I like the composition/decomposition aspect of playing with partly recognizable shapes, adding colour and tone. They also have an element of openness and “breathing space” which my own drawings, paintings and prints often lack.

   
Guitar, Glas Jet, and bottle (1913): Oil, charcoal, tinted varnish, and grit on canvas
Head of a man (1913): Cut-and-pasted wallpaper, newspaper and paper, charcoal, ink and pencil on paper mounted on canvas

Moma exhibition website: http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2011/picassoguitars//index.php

Further Google search on mixed media did not turn up many interesting other hits so I decided to look into a more serious resource, the Oxford Art Libary and searched for mixed media there. This did not turn up any paintings so I searched for watercolours and from the result list, I selected those which looked like employing watercolours with additional media. One of the first results was a painting by Paul Klee

Paul Klee 1921 Tale à la Hoffman

This painting by Paul Klee (German/Swiss 1879 – 1940) was made using watercolours, pencil and transferred ink on paper. I found this very interesting because I know the technique from the printmaking course. It’s called “Backdrawing” or “Transfer drawing” and is achieved by placing the image on an inked surface and drawing lines on the backside. When the paper is pulled off the inked surface, the lines drawn appear on the face side of the paper, because the ink has transferred due to the drawing pressure. I now recognize that Klee must have used the technique in many of his paintings. The overall impression of this painting is very unique, very characteristic for Klee and very different from any other watercolour artist I’ve seen before.

John Lewis Krimmel c. 1813 Merrymaking at a wayside inn

This picture by John Lewis Krimmel (American/German born 1786-1821) combined watercolour and graphite on white laid paper. To me it is very characteristic for the classical 19th century watercolour illustrative drawing style. Watercolours serve to colorize a drawing, the graphite helps to achieve tonal differences. The graphite does not stand out on its own as separate medium, but serves to give structure to the image.

My approach of using additional media was similar in intention, although my style with watercolours was different.

Honoré Daumier c. 1860-65 The connaisseur

This drawing by Honoré Daumier (French, 1808-1879) is similar to that by Krimmel in its subtle combination of watercolour with other media. It used pen and ink, wash, watercolour, lithographic crayon on wove paper.

Concluding remarks

This was quite an interesting research point, although there’s the problem that once started, I could go on and on without any hope of ever covering the field in its entirety, because there’s so much art out there. But I think this brief starter covered several different approaches:

– The illustrative style where watercolour serves as a coloring medium for a drawing. This style was present in the two 19th century works by Krimmel and Daumier, but I’ve also seen it in contemporary illustrations, for example in children’s books
–  A dynamic, loose and sketchy drawing approach like the work of John Marin.
–  More painterly approaches like that employed by Kellie Day
–  Abstract, graphical approaches similar to works by Picasso and Klee

Again I’m rethinking my choice of subject, whether to stay with the sunflowers or to switch to the cats (or even doing something completely different next time). Due to the near impossible of making detailed drawings or paintings of the cats without resigning to photos, the subject might actually help me to let go of accurate depiction and become more adventurous in approach.

On the other hand, the sunflower painting by Kellie Day is like a proof that the mindset is important, not the characteristics of the subject. I’m not sure. Maybe just give it another try with the cats and see what happens. I think my series of sunflowers somehow calls for a change of subject.