More water color paintings

These are paintings that I'm working on for a special benefit for a co-worker friend of mine. The square painting was done as a test to see how I can manipulate the watercolor on the clay surface. To my surprise, it takes watercolors pretty well. I found out, it's basically a matter of building up the color. But you have to use a very soft brush, or else, you can actually wipe off the layer underneath.

 

Then I did this painting. Which, started becoming convoluted. It started off first as a scene where I imagined a boy in his youth, riding around on his Radio Flyer scooter, first encountered a black 67 mustang in his neighborhood. And it stayed with him into adult hood. It's basically the American dream that lots of kids who grew up in the 60's and 70's share. But after I almost finished the painting, it became apparent that my painting became less about the boy, and more about the neighborhood. 

 

So, after looking at this darn painting for a while, I started cropping with my hand, and by doing that, I was able to find a better composition. One thing that's obvious to everyone who uses a computer is this. With digital media, one can just crop, and clean up the painting, and you're done. With real painting, it's hard to crop! But the flexibility of this clay media should allow me to crop, and I should be able to clean up the edges, etc. Anyways, boring stuff aside, here's what I'm thinking of doing. I think this will be much better. 

 

Now, I feel like it's more about the boy. The car reads too, but I felt like, it really doesn't matter what kind of car it is. The point is that the boy is totally enamoured with it.