three letter word for art

I'm forcing myself to get out and work in color, if only to get a little more comfortable with water media.  The color itself isn't the problem-- I've painted in oils so long that I'm fairly confident in terms of what I see color-wise.  It's just that watercolors are the exact opposite of oil paint.  Oil is forgiving.  You can add or subtract easily to cover up your mistakes, and you can mix right there on the canvas.  Watercolor requires a lot more discipline, and I just haven't gotten there yet.  We'll see...

I'm baffled. I'm baffled that millions of tourists visit San Antonio each year, many of them to look at and take thousands of pictures of a small, architecturally modest building in Alamo Plaza whose historical significance they don't entirely understand or even care about. I'm baffled that of those tourists, only a handful will ever spend any time looking at another building-- the Tower Life Building née the Smith-Young Tower. Even fewer will devote a portion of their memory cards to documenting the neo-gothic facets of its flattened hexagon shape, its elaborate program of gargoyles, the sun glinting off its emerald roof. Fewer still will bother to learn the name of the building or its place in the history of skyscrapers. There are no restaurants or shops on the stretch of the Riverwalk below this building, and, unless you work there, no reasons to enter the lobby. It sits alone quietly at the far end of downtown away from the convention center and the mega-hot...

I took a trip into downtown San Antonio and it appears I'll have my work cut out for me. There appears to be more than a summer or two's worth of subject matter here from which to choose. In any event, this afternoon's ramblings were my first real San Antonio sketches, outside of a trip I took here in June for a friend's wedding. Things I'll need to remember: sunscreen, sunglasses, the patience to deal with panhandlers, the ability to find cheap parking (or the bus), time. I think that's about it.