MDes yunting
Where Did Pickle Go
watercolor Theme
Story
Last month, my cat Pickle passed away suddenly of cancer. For a long time afterward, I kept asking myself whether I had missed the chance to save him. The guilt kept returning, tangled up with memories of the ordinary days we spent together.
While researching how people express grief across different media, I found that most of these images are heavy and direct. But alongside the sadness of losing Pickle, I also felt the joy of remembering him, and the warmth he still seems to bring to our home.
Research
Artists and works that express grief across different media.
The Sick Child
Edvard Munch, 1885
Munch painted his sister, who died of tuberculosis, and scraped, scratched, and repainted the surface again and again.
Life? or Theatre?
Charlotte Salomon, 1940
Hiding from the Nazis in southern France, she painted over 700 gouache sheets combining images, handwritten text, and music cues, like an early graphic novel.
The Old Guitarist
Pablo Picasso, 1901
After a close friend died, Picasso painted almost only in blues for about three years: blind beggars, thin figures, cold light.
Visual Reference
Artists and works that shaped my thinking about color and technique.
Michael Rosen's Sad Book
Quentin Blake, illustrations
Rosen wrote it after his son died, and Blake illustrated it in loose ink and watercolor. The book shifts between gray, washed-out pages and warm, bright pages of remembered happy moments, such as birthdays and his son laughing.
Landscape
Christian Eckler
a Munich-based German watercolorist who paints landscapes, villages, and architecture. His style is loose and luminous: wet-in-wet washes, clear bright color, and large areas of untouched white paper.
Giorgio Morandi
LIuis Bruguera
An artist from Europe, sketching nature has become for him a major artistic practice.
Cat
Yutaka Murakami
Using a masterful wet-on-wet technique, he creates soft edges, delicate textures, and subtly vibrant colors.
Beach
Nuria Riera
A visual artist working in watercolor on paper. She paints the everyday and the sea.
Little Cottage
Matty Burnham
An ink and watercolor illustrator who focus on beautiful local landscapes. He always works on cotton paper and, through practiced techniques, achieves a distinctive granulating effect within the washes of watercolor.
Holbein Artists Watercolors
Set of 18
Pigments
Name, type, properties, and performance
Arches Watercolor Pad
Cold Press 11x15
Tools
Theme
Where Did Pickle Go is a simple question, but a hard one to answer for me. In this series, I would like to use bright, warm watercolors and simple techniques to explore how I live with these mixed feelings.
I look for Pickle in the places he used to be: the patch of sunlight where he slept, the corner where he watched the window, and the small rituals of our everyday life.
I have no idea whether this feeling will fade with time. But at least these paintings can hold on to the good moments we shared.