Week 1 Draft:
Key questions:
- Is this user error, or ____ error? I.e. is it not working because I don’t have the right tools, the right technique, etc. or is it not working because I am still a novice?
- Do the tools make the medium?
- Because of the nature of watercolor, is it a restrictive medium in its applications?
I think the simplest experiment to explore each of these questions would be to acquire a range of different quality tools used in traditional watercolor (in this case, I would choose brushes, canvas, and paint as the tools) and recreate a single image with variation in these tools. There would have to be a control in each of the experiments, depending on the tool. This would give very direct comparisons of how each tool/aid changes the experience.
Alongside that experiment, I would propose a second that focuses on exploring the restrictions of watercolor as a medium. In order to do so, I believe that each of the aforementioned categories should stray from the traditional and be pushed to the limit of their definition, e.g. can dirt mixed with water be considered paint, can fabric be used viably in watercolor, etc.
Week 2 Draft:
While struggling to copy watercolor artist JieYu’s painting of a dancing statue, I was met with several key questions throughout the exercise.
Is this user error, or ____ error? I.e. is it not working because I don’t have the right tools, the right technique, etc. or is it not working because I am still a novice? Do the tools make the medium? I.e. if I had better brushes/paints/paper would this exercise be easier, or would I find my technique still lacking? Because of the nature of watercolor, is it a restrictive medium in its applications?
There’s a common phrase that is used often when speaking colloquially about two essentially similar—but stylistically different—things: “Same (blank), different font.” For example, two sisters who have the same mannerisms but opposite clothing styles would be “the same person in different fonts.” Meaning that, though they express themselves differently when it comes to clothing, the two girls are the same in essence. That phrase is what came to mind as I read Raymond Queneau’s Exercises in Style in preparation for the second phase of my project. The story being told about the platform and the young man, though relayed in various writing styles, is essentially saying the same thing over and over again. Same story, different fonts (though not literally different fonts). This is what inspired my second week’s iterative experiments.
Initially, I believed that the simplest experiment to explore each of the questions above would be to acquire a range of different quality tools used in traditional watercolor (in this case, I would choose brushes, canvas, and paint as the tools) and recreate a single image with variation in these tools. In this experiment, there would be a control in each of the variations depending on the tool. This would give very direct comparisons of how each tool/aid changes the experience. I decided that I would recreate the same graph with different quality tools, thus hacking watercolor and changing the context that the medium appears in while still answering some of the critical questions that arose during my initial experiment.
However, as I began hacking my medium, I was less interested in the context of watercolor and instead became increasingly aware of how reluctant it is to be contained in precise shapes, particularly where those shapes are small or fine. This, as well as Queneau’s Exercises in Style, inspired me to use watercolor to paint the same word in different fonts—literally. For my second week’s iterative experiment, I painted the word watercolor in over 45 different sans serif fonts in an effort to force the medium to create small, fine, clean shapes. In this way, I was successful in my original experiment of creating the same image repeatedly with slight variation in how it’s presented. In a more real sense, this experiment was only successful in proving exactly how difficult and unforgiving watercolor can truly be.
Week 3 Draft:
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