Painting on Yupo, Workshop Day 3

Today I finished up my painting for the workshop demonstration. I worked around the flower, painting each pedal with an application of wet-into-wet paint, dropping in color, adding a dark maroon mix where needed and lifting out paint as needed to create form. To enhance the perspective of color, I used more neutral magenta and purples in the pedals behind and more intense magenta and whites for the forward shapes. I may add a few more details or dark shadows within the flower to finish. Once complete, I will use an aerosol varnish to seal the painting and then mat and frame the painting behind glass.

Painting on Yupo, Workshop Day 2

In today's "Watercolor on Yupo" workshop, I painted the background (and some foreground) for what will be a water lily flower. The paint for the background was applied using a "soupy" mix of paint, pulling from puddles of Perylene Green, Winsor Green, Indigo, and Dioxazine Purple. I allowed the colors to loosely mingle by dropping in water and pushed around the darks with a paintbrush to create forms until the paint dried. For painting these rich darks, I have recently began using the PBk31 pigment, Perylene Green. After researching this pigment (www.handprint.com, my most used reference for researching pigment), I have discovered that Perylene Green falls into the family of "Black" pigments. And now that I have been using it, I don't know how I ever got along without it. Perylene green is very lightfast (rated 1 for excellence), semitransparent, staining, very dark valued pigment.

Balloons on Yupo

Today I demonstrated two paintings for a "beginning techniques" exercise in the "Watercolor on Yupo" workshop. Yupo is a manufactured synthetic paper made from recycled plastic. The surface is nonabsorbent and so requires some variation from traditional watercolor methods. Watercolor painted on yupo creates unusual "fluid" effects. For beginning techniques, we practiced various methods for applying the paint on yupo, subtracting paint, and creating cascading variegated and flat washes. To see a few more of my paintings on yupo, visit my website gallery.