The Yellow House 2: A do Over!

This is “Yellow House” the first version.  I posted it earlier on my blog.

…and this is “Yellow House2”, a do over.  As you know, my class has been working in watercolor and rice paper collage for a few weeks, now.  This week, each student is taking an old painting that they think could use something extra to give it a little more appeal and using rice paper collage in it.  Some of these papers are opaque enough to allow for compositional changes such as my adding the slab stairway in this one. Some of the rice papers have textures that compliment the textures found in nature.  I will let you be the judge as to whether this is an improvement on the original.  Just something new you can do with your old paintings. 🙂

Facing Fear of Failure

Do you know the feeling artists?  I’m usually a “dive in” and “see what happens” kind of person. I have been presented with a challenge to attempt a watercolor of this store. I love the whole appearance of the place and am anxious to see what I can do with it. …BUT!  When I spent two nights just getting the drawing down and all the little pieces and parts that little voice inside me said, “Oh! You’ve done it this time. This may be too much for you!”

I have had to tell myself I may have chosen the wrong texture of watercolor paper for this (rough). I have reconciled myself to the fact that I need to give this drawing a “go” and re-draw it on a coldpress surface if I don’t like the outcome and maybe even a hotpress surface due to the detail in it. I have had to remind myself of the many tools and techniques I have to see this through to the finish. More importantly, I had to tell myself that this is a piece of paper and that I have more where it came from if the first take does not work. Sometimes I think I get in a mindset that every single venture has to be a finished project when I, perhaps, might choose to view each piece of paper as a learning experience.

Wish me luck. I will surely share the journey with you on this one!

Still Exploring the Watercolor and Rice Papers: Two More

I takes me a great deal of time to create these. They are never what I set out to create. They happen on the paper.  I am still in the process of learning about the different rice papers and what the pigment does on them. I like going along the edges with my brush and a dark color, most evident in the top painting. I also like washing a transparent color over what I have created to accentuate a mood, most evident in the second painting.  As I worked on this I tried to finish them toward the vision I saw coming from the design on the paper. The first one I titled Glacial Remnants and the second one, Canopy.  I love this way of working. It is as though I am immersing myself in the art and the materials and allowing them to help me work a vision forward.

Flight of the Condor: Watercolor and Rice Paper Collage

The above painting was created  with the use of textured rice papers, watercolor, ink and white goauche. It is an attempt to begin a watercolor and rice paper collage in the same way as the  previous post here. While working on it, we were to search for something recognizable and bring it forward without the use of a photo reference. We relied only on the imagery we saw appear before us and created from that imagery.

The above is my cruciform design that I started with.  I splattered and encouraged dripping. At this stage, I was seeing two mountainous forms with a valley between.

I glued down some torn pieces of rice paper using the water and acrylic matte medium mixture. I fully intended for them to take the shape of  craggy cliffs because that is what I saw, at this stage.

As I added another layer of paint, however, the image that began to appear seemed to be a giant bird form.

I added more rice papers to fill out the wings and began feeding large drippy washes of a dark sky in the background. I remembered something about condors from Big Sur Kate’s blog and how they were endangered and now protected and decided to finish it with that thought.

I deepened the sky until I was satisfied with it and played around with lifting and glueing some more cloud formations in. The condor was created withloads of different torn rice papers, watercolor, ink and white goache to make him appear a little more ghostly.

Others I have created in this manner are here, here, and here.