Wednesday, December 12, 2007 - Class Party + Cheng Khee Chee Saturated Technique

Last Tuesday, the watercolor class tried Cheng Khee Chee's saturated watercolor technique. I think all of us agreed that we didn't succeed! I even left my painting there at Sandy's, which I never do, because I didn't want to look at it and wasn't going to post it. I thought I might like it more the following week but it was just as hideous yesterday when I saw it again.

So we tried again yesterday, amidst our holiday party and gifts we had for Sandy and gifts to us from Sandy (a tube of Daniel Smith paint, a small paintbrush, and a Go Fish art game :) and gifts from Kathy (a pretty blue mug and cookies + Hershey kisses in a reindeer bag). I used a print of Chee's and tried to do a similar iris. I'm fairly pleased but I think it is going to take more practice for this technique! And my iris looks nothing like his - so that's a good thing!

This technique lifts color from very creamy colors laid down on very saturated paper. We used 140# Fabriano Artistico and put down Cobalt Blue and Cerulean Blue first as a base - and we were more able to lift back to whites than last week when we used Arches #300 and didn't use the blues as a base color. Chee does all his koi paintings this way and they are wonderful. You don't get hard edges unless you keep lifting and lifting and I stopped and since everyone said it was finished, I didn't lift anymore on it. I think it needs some hard edges, though...