Local artist explains techniques

Watercolorist Brian Petty started breaking the rules of the medium before he even knew they existed. Rule Number One declares that the artist should work in that most rarefied atmosphere, known as north light.

He not only shuns north light, he prefers to paint by midnight oil - or, more precisely, a 100-watt incandescent light bulb directly over his work.

A second rule demands that watercolor artists work, for the most part, on a horizontal surface, but Petty paints on a drafting table with his work nearly vertical. The tendency is for the watercolorist to work with ever larger brushes, using the smallest ones only for fine detail, but Brian paints almost exclusively with small 'rounds,' from 0 to 6 in size, and admits that the biggest brush he uses regularly, a 1/4' shader, is mostly used for scrubbing out mistakes.

Another watercolor 'no-no' that Brian waves aside is the use of white pigment. And most contrary of all, Petty does not paint 'wet-on-wet.' His paper is dry from start to finish. It is the combination of these unorthodox techniques that gives his paintings their unmistakable, highly original, and much admired style.

As the guest demonstrator at the November meeting of the Western Wayne Art Group, where he is a member, Petty shared part of his vast reference library of 'fantasy' comics and catalogues, figure, head, and gesture sketch books, and original photographs.

He calls upon these to flesh out themes with motion, costumes, props, and settings. His paintings are usually born of quick gesture drawings on sketch paper; when an idea begins to form, he builds on it and plays with the composition until satisfied. The sketch is then transferred to 140-pound rough watercolor paper.

Although he has had commissions of everything from cars and houses to people and animal portraits, his favorite paintings, which he does for his own satisfaction rather than for market appeal, are almost always of a fantasy theme and always include people. Also, he said, 'Contrast is everything' in his work; he uses lots of dark pigment, perhaps due to his origins in cartooning. 'I'm always looking for ways to tweak the contrast. With fantasy painting, it doesn't really matter if the light is exactly right because it IS fantasy.'

To illustrate his technique, Petty brought along a half-finished painting called Midnight Rendezvous.

As he discussed the drawing of a merman's romantic interlude at sea with his paramour in a rowboat, a ship anchored off a desert isle in the background, he continued the painstaking work with the finest of brushes. It usually takes him about two weeks to complete a typical painting in his preferred 12x18 size, although some works have taken considerably longer. As he fielded questions, he worked on one small area of the painting at a time, moving from one section to another to maintain unity. The painting was still unfinished at the end of the meeting.

A resident of Ontario, Petty presented a cartooning class to middle school-aged children under the auspices of Walworth Recreation Dept. He is currently working on a historical mural project in Seneca Falls.

The Western Wayne Art Group meets monthly at Walworth town Hall, 3600 Lorraine Drive, Walworth. All are invited to the January 21 meeting.

Art Group Officers: President Donna Neu, Vice President Marge Wilkins, Treasurer Demaris Frantz, Secretary John Domm.

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