How I Painted the Pakistan 2024 Collection

I started by traveling and taking photos. I went to Pakistan in July of 2024. Once I was there, I went on several road trips. I went from Islamabad to Murree to Lahore to Faisalabad. This was a bit like driving from San Francisco to Tahoe to Los Angeles in terms of time. I sat in the passenger’s seat of the car with my phone in my hand. Every time we slowed down or came to a crowded intersection, I started snapping photos. I had to act quickly to get a photo: there was only time to point the camera and click; there was no time to compose a shot. There was really no time to even see what I was taking a photo of. Sometimes we’d round a corner and I’d aim the camera and snap a few photos before I could even see if there was anything worth capturing in view!

On a typical ride in the car in Pakistan - we’re talking an hour or two in the car - I’d snap 500 photos. Day-long trips caused me to max out the amount of space on my phone. I know now that I can have 1400 photos on my phone at a time. Alleys crammed with stalls, mango vendors, motorcyclists, goats, men standing on the tops of moving buses… I’d take photos as quickly as I could, hoping to get a clear shot. This got tricky because I was shooting through the window of a car. I’d capture photos of my own reflection, or the side mirror of the car would get in the way of the view. A lot of these photos were blurry. A lot of the resulting photographs had nothing particularly paintable in them.

When I came home from Pakistan, I had thousands and thousands of photos. That meant that I had thousands and thousands of reference photos to comb through. This became my treasure hunt. I’d scroll through my photos during quiet moments. Many of the photographs were really cluttered with people and cows and carts and wires. I’d zoom in and crop the photos to find compositions. Because I take photos so rapidly, I saw these compositions, which I think of as stories, only hours, days, or weeks after I’d snapped the original photo.

When I go through my photos, I save the ones I like the most to my “art reference photos” folder. Then, when it’s time to paint, I choose the reference photo that’s speaking to me in the moment.

For my Pakistan 2024 Collection, I created a series of 5'“ x 7” line and wash paintings. I started painting the collection while I was still in Pakistan, and the others (it’s August at the time of this writing and I’m painting the last few now to finish up) I worked on at home in Livermore, California.

Once I choose a reference photo, I pull a slip of watercolor paper from my wooden art box. Then I sharpen a pencil. I start by making a loose sketch of what I see in the photo. I might choose to stay faithful to what I see in the photo or I might choose to simplify the composition by leaving things out. I like to put on music while I do this. I have a lot of playlists on Spotify. In Pakistan, I listened to Voctave and New York Voices a lot. The initial sketch might take an hour or so to complete. I take my time, but I also incorporate some deliberate wobbles into my lines to give the sketch more character.

Once I’ve completed the pencil sketch, I go over the graphite in ballpoint pen or fine liner. I don’t try to trace over my pencil sketch exactly; I allow the lines to wiggle a little bit. Once I’ve laid in the ink, I don’t erase the pencil. I like the way it looks to have the pencil lines visible.

Then it’s time to paint. I wet down my watercolors and start to dab color in translucent washes on the page. I like to limit the number of colors I use in a painting to about five. To me, this keeps the palette coherent and helps the painting stay legible. I’ll add one initial layer of paint, and then I’ll let it dry. Once it’s dry, I can see what changes I need to make. I might decide to darken some of the ink. I might decide to add some more paint in places. I often use a white gel pen to add highlights or contrast. I typically dry and tweak a painting in this series two or three times. Once I’m satisfied, I’ll sign it (I add WF in pen on the bottom somewhere) and consider it done.