John Thompson's Truck: WIP

This is the painting that I had my class do tonight during our class.  I would paint a section of the truck, and then the students would paint a part - they did SO well tonight!  I will post the finished painting soon. 

WIP: Succulent

 I did some experimenting this weekend with pouring.  The Watercolor Workshop Yahoo group has this succulent for it's March project.  I decided to try a different approach and after drawing it using a grid, I outlined it all with miskit.  I decided to pour each leaf individually instead of the whole paper at once.  I used acrylic inks which I mixed up ahead of time.  I removed the miskit and am ready to define and detail the painting with traditional watercolor techniques.  The painting is 15" x 20" and is on Fabriano Artistico 140 lb. cold-pressed watercolor paper.

"It's Improv, Man!"

I'm putting the Mary Todd Beam book aside for a day to post this little creation.  While mixing acrylic inks this afternoon for a demo pour I am doing Tuesday night, I was cleaning my brushes on a scrap of watercolor paper.  I began to really like what was happening and continued to develop it into an abstract painting.  The size is 4" x 10" and is painted on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico cold-pressed watercolor paper.  I guess you can tell what colors the pour will be on Tuesday night!

Bringing Back The Whites

Lifting color to Bring Back White...I first did a thumbnail of my idea and then layed in washes in burnt sienna, yellow ochre, and ultramarine blue and various mixtures of the three colors.  Beam recommends that you use a foam brush to lift color, but since I didn't have one, I used an inch flat watercolor brush and proceeded to lift out areas including my leaf shapes.  After it dried, I added paint to define and tweek the composition using the same colors I used for the initial washes.  Except for the final application, which gives you hard edges, this lifting technique gives you a gentle, soft effect.  This painting is 6" x 12" and is painted on Canson Tientes 140 lb. cold-pressed watercolor paper.

Opaque and Textured Cornflowers

In the book "Celebrate Your Creative Self", Beam talks about when opaques surround your subject matter, it will make your subject more special.  In this painting, I drew some cornflowers on a reject painting from the "archives" and then surrounded them with light blue acrylic paint allowing the original painting to be the subject cornflowers. I tweeked some areas with glossy green and ginger acrylic paint.   Beam states that the opaques help focus attention on the subject of the painting.

This painting is 9" x 6" and is on 140 lb. Arches cold-pressed watercolor paper.

Painting Around the White

This is the second project I am doing from Mary Todd Beam's book "Celebrate Your Creative Self!"  This lesson and project  is "painting around the white."  In the book she says: With this technique you isolate the white shapes and hold them as positive shapes, painting the negative background shapes.   I have done a lot of negative painting, but I have never approached it exactly like this.  I did this same subject a few months ago in an entirely different approach - a traditional approach.  This painting is looser than that first one.  Although it is still tight by many standards, this one, especially the background is much less tight.

View From the Window

I received a new book in the mail today - Celebrate Your Creative Self by Mary Todd Beam.  It is wonderful - chocked full of wonderful projects that are so creative and pushing the edge...just what I need!

The project I selected today asked you to come up with a composition which starts with a triangle, square and circle.  She used a bird and so did I, but my bird is not like her bird I assure you!  She also used liquid acrylics and I used watercolors.  The challenge in this projects was to protect white areas by masking with contact paper, which I didn't have!  Soooo - I used masking tape to create my dark and light patterns.  I put the tape on the areas and then cut around it with an x-acto knife.  Then I  did the painting with quinacridone burnt orange, yellow ochre, cereulean  blue and quinacridone  gold.  Of course I used salt to texturize some areas.  I plan to work my way through the book using the projects.