Cuppa Wawa (Mug of Water)

30" x 34", acrylic & Sharpie on synthetic paper. (c)2011 by Howard Salmon

I found myself getting in a rut with my "masks" concept; it was starting to feel like a shtick. So, to shake things up a bit, I decided to just start drawing from life. In this case, I sketched directly onto my drawing surface with a Sharpie. The subject matter: my hand holding a bottle of water (and one of my Andy Iventosch mugs, on the far right). Then I went in and added color with several layers of acrylic, and reinforced some of those lines with more Sharpie.  I worked in a very "automatic" way, not really thinking too much about the imagery I was laying down. My only concern was to draw from life,and have it all overlap and congeal together into a cluster.  The result: a bunch of frozen moments that together describe the act of pouring water into a mug.