some prattle

"I always make written notations of the colors: the fundamental local color tones, the color-textures, and jot down some ideas for the use of color sequences --- some prattle about my feelings for the scene. "
- John Sloan, The Gist of Art

Sketches and watercolor studies get down pertinent information about a subject in a brief amount of time. They are a type of shorthand --- information collected quickly to be reworked in the studio at a later date. I sometimes write directly on the watercolor paper and paint on it later, as shown above in the third picture. My notes include abbreviations of colors and a number indicating gray scale tone (1 = white, 10 = black). I keep a #5 gray indicator in my sketchbook to gauge things against. Vocalists find their pitch, we painters find our tone.

Scattered among these flannel days of winter have been some tremendous sunsets, the day's death in pretty colors. At first, I hesitated painting these, but I look to Thomas Cole, Caspar David Friedrich, and other idols of mine, for whom intensely colored sunsets were legitimate subjects --- the Sublime, not Margaritaville.