Drawing Tuesday - fountains / water

The morning looked promising for getting out and searching for a fountain or river or canal or puddle of some sort - or for staying at home to observe some home-made, indoor, fountains or waterfalls or streams. Playing with tapwater, or a bowlful, can be captured on camera - a closeup shot or zooming in to a watery image on screen can be surprising and amazing. I had no idea the colours were lurking - they appeared only when the image was blown up again and again - 

Sunlight on the sea

Another example, from a set taken near my home (https://www.instagram.com/p/B7-7_cJHsbf/ - click on the arrows within the picture to see them all) -  shows what a bit of wind can do with a waterfall -

And there are ripples and reflections. And distortion, and diffraction. 

Tania Kovats has a book called "Drawing Water: Drawing as a mechanism for exploration" which is more about drawing than about water itself. She's used water in her work in many ways - fascinating. A book that will have you looking closely at water in many contexts - puddles, ponds, rivers, ocean - and understanding how it's behaving is Tristan Gooley's How to Read Water.

Among many artists who have drawn the surface of the sea is Vija Celmins. More watery-painterly inspiration is gathered here. 

From Ann - a watercolour study of movement sea water ... a photo I took in March of a dolphin swimming alongside our boat in Costa Rica ...a drawing I did recently of Tempest by Scandinavian artist Peder Balke 1880s

From Judith - Difficult today!  A pile of quickly melting ice cubes and then after mopping up a splash from a photo and a quick glass of water.

From Hazel - An imagined stream viewed through tree branches. I used dripped, thinned acrylic paint then drew into it with a pipette and found stick.

From Richard - A rather rushed pastel from me. Mission creep has generated containers rather than water but that’s hard to avoid indoors!

From Sue S -  spotted interesting reflections in a flooded plant tray - pastels & neo-colour to the fore. Oval rather wonky, but had more fun being looser.

From Sue B - I have used two photos sent to me…one of Crail beach, Fife (which I adore!!) - omitting a seagull! - …and another of Camber Sands, Dorset. For the former I just used watercolour; for Camber Sands I experimented with oil crayons and watercolour.

From Najlaa - I like this photo from the internet of the Tigris river southern Iraq.

From Carol - Trying to be clever and include last week’s ellipses as well. This was done from a tutorial in a book, quite difficult but fun and I learnt a lot.

From Joyce - Barnes Wetlands from a sketch. Painted a couple of weeks ago, we had visitors today, social distancing in the garden so not much time!

From Mags - White gel pen following lines of the Thames on section of 1904 cycling map of London.

From Gill - Tried to recreate bubbles in the sink. On the left a little ink study and a pencil study. On the right an experiment with water and washing up liquid.

From Jackie - torn water colour strips with recently discarded torn sea scape photos  and an attempt to merge both with black wavy lines… 

and  a ceramic collage (a work I did earlier…) of a sunset over the sea referencing a trip long ago to NZ

From Margaret - I started by reading a bit and collecting words describing water

but that went nowhere (I've returned to it since, there's a germ of an idea, sprouting).

Watercolour seemed to be an appropriate medium, and I had a lovely memory of a canoe trip in Canada, with waving and glimmering reflections in shallow water, but couldn't find my photos (2007 - on an old computer...). There's a blog post of the time, with pictures of "spooky forest" and a forest pool -

which I tackled with watercolour, and doesn't the transparency make it look different! -

The exercise left me very despondent about my painting skills, or rather, lack of understanding of how to tackle a subject like that.

Back to the "sunlit ripples" - there are many pix online, of course -  this comes close to my memory (and the Reading Water book explains why it looks like that, all to do with the water acting as a "flexible lens") -

So I dabbed about a bit and learned a little and got this

and went to have a good look at how David Hockney does it...

But the sunlit ripples set something else scratching in the back of my brain - aha, those pale, intersecting lines in some of Ian McKeever's paintings -