Sketchy History of One Image from the Gulf Coast

A Sketchy History of One Image from the Gulf Coast

One image from all the coverage of the BP disaster in the Gulf haunted me for weeks. It was a great Pelican arising up from the ooze, crippled and dripping black from the oil. I first worked the idea out on my last two sheets of Indian Mill handmade watercolor paper. I used Derwent sketching dark wash pencils. Prior, I had been experimenting with, new to me, watercolor canvas. Deciding it was not for me, at least with this image, which by now had become rather important, a bit of an obsession. I had some regular gesso-ed oil linen canvas. In experimented with my watercolors on the canvas I decided the linen was much more successful than the watercolor canvas for my painting methods. Thus a small 8 by 10 watercolor on linen canvas, "Collateral Damage, 2010" came to be. The sketches and final watercolor piece are shown here.

Alysanne McGaffey