YUPO WEEKEND

Tomorrow begins a new adventure. We're doing yet another weekend workshop in my teaching studio, but rather than bringing in a nationally known teacher this time, we are exploring YUPO with me as the guide. And I LOVE to teach about all the possibilities of creating art on the slick YUPO surface!

This painting, on YUPO, was painted several years ago while I was on a week long painting holiday with three other artists. Maybe it should have been cropped at the far shoreline, eliminating the trees, shoreline, and sky???

There will be lots to post when our workshop is over Sunday evening. See you soon!

"TIDE'S OUT" Transparent Watercolor on YUPO 13 x 9" COLLECTED

VACATION

Several years ago, three other watercolorists and I spent a week right on the ocean in Maine. Barb had rented a wonderful old cottage for us to enjoy near a very picturesque fishing village. The deck of the cottage was about 12 feet from the edge of the ocean, and we were in a wonderfully secluded cove. Paradise!

This was the view from where I sat painting each day. Watching the tide come in and go out, watching the continuous display of beautiful skies and sunrises, as well as seeing another part of the world never fails to inspire me to paint. The rocks or boulders were worn from eons of waves hitting them, and they were still enormous.

All my life people have told me to paint what I feel, express myself, say what I want to say. Great... except I never had ANY idea what I wanted to say. If I knew, I would've said it out loud.

In Maine that summer, I finally realized that painting lets me express what I want to say in the very best way that I can express it. Painting is my voice to help me know what I'm feeling and experiencing, and often, it's while I'm painting that I get in touch with feelings that I had no idea were there.

Anyone else like that? You have no idea what you want to convey or express until you've got it down with paint on paper. Then maybe you finally know what it was you wanted to 'say.' Probably if I knew ahead of time, I would just say it out loud and not paint it.

"VACATION" Transparent Watercolor on 140#CP Arches 11 x 7" COLLECTED

FIREWORKS

All day long, actually for the past week, we've been hearing the sounds of firecrackers and other fireworks being shot off to help celebrate our nation's 233rd birthday. Fireworks are really tricky to paint with watercolor, so here's my effort for celebrating - a rendition of a gentle evening at the lake with a beautiful red, white, and blue sunset, without fireworks.

This is a very small (for me) watercolor done as a demo many years ago in one of my intermediate classes. With the exception of painting the little duck in after it dried, this landscape took about ten minutes to create.

The focus was to let the water and paint do as much of the work as possible. Using the paint brush to deliver the paint to the paper, then getting out of the way, was the hardest part.

It used to be so like me to want to mess and play and touch up, and it was way too easy to overdo a good thing. But it's so true that watercolor does its best when it's allowed to flow and mingle on its own.

Happy Fourth of July, America!

"CELEBRATION" Transparent Watercolor on 140#CP Arches 11 x 7" COLLECTED

OLD PAINTING - NEW SNOW

What a beautiful morning it's been! The snow outside is soft and deep, curling up and around each obstacle it fell on. The birds have been frantically digging for their food.

This painting was a quick class demo that turned out alright ... from many years ago ... and reminds me of today. The key word here is 'QUICK.'

Because of the natural spontaneity of watercolor, it's a great thing to splash some paint on the paper with an idea in mind and see what happens. The key is leaving it alone, touching it only a bit where it matters, and not working it to death to make it 'better.'

Some artists can naturally and intuitively do this, but for me it's a struggle. I love when it happens, though.

Now I'm off to PLAN another painting .... or change my plans and just paint by the seat of my pants. We'll see.

"SOLITUDE" Transparent Watercolor on 140#CP Arches 12 x 17" COLLECTED

PAINT ALONG

Several artists in my classes have expressed a desire to be able to paint along with me rather than create their own work, so this Wednesday night I'm starting a class that will help those artists feel more secure about painting. This harbour scene will be the first thing we paint together, and I know that even though everyone paints the same thing, we'll have a dozen different paintings when we're done.

Painting along with the instructor can be very beneficial to help an artist learn special techniques and skills. The danger in attending paint-along classes too long is that many people get very comfortable and satisfied creating successful painting copied from the teacher, then find it quite frustrating to paint when they try it on their own. As long as artists are learning new techniques and processes (not repeating them) it seems that the paint-along process can be justified.

When someone helps each step of the way, results can be almost guaranteed. Painting your own original masterpiece should be as easy - we wish! It's also a lot easier for me to teach a paint-along class, but the satisfaction factor is much higher for me as a teacher when I see artists have successful results while working on their own original works and inspriations. There's just a lot more frustration and struggle they have to wade through to get to that success.

Either way, teaching is a lot of fun, and I wouldn't change my 'job' for anything. It's amazing how much 'work' art can be and how much work that teaching art can be. But it never really seems like a real job, even though it's work!

FYI - I did screen out several people who wanted to take the class. They weren't allowed because they no longer need to copy a teacher to learn what they need to know, and I knew that this new class would actually hold them back as well as stifle their own creativity.

I'll let you know how Wednesday evenings work out.

"MAINE EVENING" Transparent Watercolor on 140# CP Arches 15x 11" COLLECTED

YUPO EARLY PAINTING

This YUPO painting is one of the very first ones I did back when I was just discovering why some colors pounced on others and pushed them out of the way so fast. I called them 'pushy' colors in a class once, referring to them several times that way, 'pushy.' The next week, one of the ladies asked me where to buy that brand of watercolors. She'd been all over town and couldn't find them.

Sooo ----- pushy colors are heavier in particle size, less finely ground, and they quickly sink to the bottom of a puddle, spreading out along the slick surface of the YUPO. When mixing just 'pushy' colors together, they get along, but when put in a puddle of finely ground color, like a phthalo or quinacridone color, WOW!!! Lots of action.

Click on photo, and you can see the 'pushy' color effect on the side of the red ship. I used only pushy colors in the sky because I wanted it to stay put and be as smooth as possible. (This was before the days of using a foam roller to smooth the colors on YUPO.)

All cobalts, most earth pigment like siennas and umbers, and cerulean are 'pushy.' There are lots more, so you'll have to try your own paints in puddles of phthalos or quinacridones to see how they behave on YUPO. Once you know what ones work against each other, then you can make good choices about the effects you want to happen on YUPO.

"DEEP SEA DREAMS" Transparent Watercolor on YUPO 25 x 19"