Monday, Apr. 9, 2007 - Back to Watercolor Class

Returned to watercolor class after skipping last week to get the bathroom sanded, primed, and painted (well, it's almost done but now I'm rethinking the color - and this is why I should go ahead and do it while the mood strikes! haha)

Sandy did a demo today of a big ocean wave on Yupo. Yupo is a plastic "paper" used first in the printing business and now discovered by many watercolor artists, including George James http://www.georgejameswatercolor.com and
Taylor Ikin http://www.taylorikin.com.

To get in the mood, I did a few small waves on wc paper this weekend. This little one was based on a picture in a small beginners book by Walter Foster called How to Draw and Paint Wave Action by Irene Lumgair (it's an oil painting booklet but it had some nice pics to use for reference).

In class we each worked on a piece of Yupo paper and used it to create our waves. This one I created came from a photo Jerry took off the beach in Palm Coast this past March.

There is something hypnotic about waves. The fact that they are constantly rolling, moving, and shifting makes me content to sit and watch them until I'm almost in a meditative state with no thinking. One's mind is like the waves, always rolling, moving, turning, splashing, and always changing.

When working on Yupo, the paint does odd things - it shifts and moves and some colors push other colors aside, creating interesting texture. Now, I didn't get my sky smoothe like Sandy did her sky - even though I rolled it and rolled it with a little roller like she did, I still got spreckles and things in the sky so had to let it do it's thing (you have to do that with Yupo at times rather than fight it).

Here's a pic of the painting with a larger section so you can see the texture you get on this paper. If you like what you have when you're finished, you need to spray seal it with a Krylon matte spray (or something similar). I really like this piece - hey! maybe I have 2-3 paintings, not just one?