Gouache Resist: Maltese

 

 

 

The above two paintings were created by using a gouache resist technique that I teach in my watercolor plus class. If you would like to try one, I have a tutorial on this technique here.

Both paintings were created with the use of one photo reference from wet canvas. It never ceases to amaze me, the amount of variation that can occur during multiple repeats of the same reference by the same artist. I think that is one of the reasons I am so drawn to fine art painting. What was the artist thinking? What was the artist trying to share? What was the artist seeing? Try as I might, I can not make a second painting of the same subject look just like the first one. Things change. I either see new things in the reference material or feel differently the second time through.

Every once in awhile I will give my students the same reference to work from and  they all look so different! Some choose to paint only a portion of the reference.  Their color choices always vary.  Their drawing styles and techniques are different.

For me?  Reading a painting is just like reading a book. There is always a hidden story about their creator in them. Creativity is a wonderful thing!

New Student Art: Watercolor Plus

Cindy Guzik
watercolor and ink

 

Nancy Longmate
wax resist

 

Dorette Hess
citrasolv collage and watercolor

 

Judy Notestine
gouache resist,collage and watercolor

The above paintings are examples of what the artists in my Watercolor Plus class created.  Watercolor Plus is a nice class to end our yearly sessions with.  They created using watercolor and ink, wax, tape and gouache resists, citrasolv collage and watercolor, and gesso juice surface and watercolor and watercolor and pastel.  If you would like to see more examples of their creations. you can view them by clicking here.

Thank you to all the artists who take my classes and continue to share your creations on the student art page.

Citrasolv Collage and Watercolor: Red-Eared Slider

 

OK, I’m going to send you to a few places if you want to go and explore this citrasolv use in art. I love it!  It was first introduced to me by Carol King on her post here. She is the one who gets the blame for why my garage smells like this cleaning agent about three times each year when I go to work making colored papers from National Geographic photos. I explain the process of how to make these papers here.  If you really want to know all the neat things that can be done with Citrasolv and view a huge artist gallery of art created from them, you can visit this site provided by the Citrasolv company here.

My students just shared their creations this week. They each used these wonderful papers in their own creations. There will be a few of them shared on in their student gallery I post in a few weeks. Thank you to wet canvas reference library for the reference image for this handsome turtle. It was not named in the photo, but one of my students looked him up and found this. He is a red-slider turtle. I have also done two collages, without paint,  here and here. When I use them this way, I call it drawing with paper.  I never set aside time to keep one of these going on the side. Maybe I should start doing that this summer. They are time consuming, but so worth it!

 

Indiana Pond on Gesso Juice Surface

 

The scene, above, is a view of a private pond north of where I live. The owners have been kind enough to allow me to take photos of and paint scenes from their property.

In class, right now, my students are creating paintings in watercolor on different surfaces or incorporating different mediums. We do something different each week. Week before last was the crayon resist. This week we painted something on a surface that we prepared with “gesso juice”. I wrote a post about how to prepare the surface of your paper here. I actually added sand to the gesso when preparing this surface. If you enlarge the above painting, you can see evidence of the sand in that large tree trunk on the left.

This surface is very FREEING. It is not as slippery as Yupo, so it is easier to apply the pigment. You also have the ability to lift color and to play around in the image. I always spray these with acrylic matte fixative when I’m done. Otherwise, a drop of water could do damage.