Student Art: Spring 2017

Laura Butchko

Kara Morris3

Jim Wulpi5

 

Jan Reche

Diana Ringer2

Linda Flatley2

The above paintings are just a few from the spring classes in watercolor this year.

The beginning class learns about their supplies, basic techniques in application such as wet-in-wet, wet on dry and dry brushing. They learn about color combinations and value, texture and techniques to enhance texture. They learn to use masking fluid. We talk about things we need to be concerned with when painting trees, clouds, buildings and little people. If you would like to view more of the Beginning Watercolor  paintings,  there is a temporary gallery set up here.

The Watercolor Plus class worked on six different mixed media approaches with watercolor. They painted on masa paper. They worked with ink and watercolor and chose all sorts of different techniques with ink. One example using ink might be this technique. They used citrasolv collage and watercolor. They used white gouache to glaze a painting. They did a gouache resist.  Everyone painted on a textured gesso surface they created.

If you would like to view a gallery of the  Watercolor Plus class paintings click here.

Thank you to all my students who attend my classes and share their art here!

Two portraits on a Grunge Background

 

I don’t know why I like working on a background that has marks on it already. The above two paintings were drawn and created on watercolor paper that I had “grunged” with coffee, ink, and applied gesso to in advance. Here is a post that describes the process.

It is not just the challenge of working on a surface that has been disturbed that I find interesting. It is examining the marks and finding a subject that they work with or discovering new ways of working with or around abstract marks. It is seeing that all these marks can increase the feeling of depth in some paintings.

The top painting is Teddy, my dog. The bottom one is a self portrait.

Catching up: Watercolor Plus Exercises

Sorry for my long absence. I will slowly be getting back to visiting all of you and hope to post more frequently.

The above two paintings were done by using the gouache resist technique that I have outlined for anyone to try by clicking here. I have always enjoyed this process, even though it is lengthy. I like the rustic block print-like look to them. Some of them, I have liked in the black and white stage and choose to not color them in with watercolor.

Another painting I worked on was one that I combined waterproof black ink and watercolor to create. I initially splattered the surface of the watercolor paper with white acrylic gesso and waterproof black ink ( I use india ink). I then drew out my composition and used two separate techniques to lay in the inking. I drew and scraped in the mane on the foreground black and blue horse with a razor blade. I also drew some of the fine lines on the background horses with the tip of the razor blade. The larger black inked lines were drawn with an eye dropper and spritzed with a fine mist from a spray bottle.

The last painting I completed was a self portrait of me with my new rescue dog. This is painted with watercolor, first. Then I added numerous paper collage. The dog is mostly rice paper and watercolor.  The dark creases in my sweater and the bit of blouse under my chin are citrasolv collage papers.

Again, I apologize for my long absence and will be around to play catch up and see what you all have been working on.

 

New Student Art: Watercolor Plus

We just finished up our last watercolor class of this school year. I always save this class to finish out the school year. Each week, we use a different technique in our paintings. Sometimes we change the support we work on. Sometimes we add another medium to watercolor.

The first week we worked on a toned masa paper support.

Nancy Longmate5

Masa paper is a type of rice paper that you can crinkle, wet, tone and allow to dry before gluing it to the surface of your watercolor paper. Once that dries, you can paint on that as your support. The student who created the above took the process a step farther and collaged other papers onto the surface of her watercolor painting. If you would like to try this technique, I have explained the process here.

The second week we worked on a gesso juice prepared surface.

Henn Laidroo2

We made a mixture of acrylic matte medium, gesso and water and brushed it onto the surface of our watercolor paper. Before that dried, we scratched into the surface with a credit card. Some of us added rice papers and/or craft sand to the wet surface. Once that dried, we used that as our support to paint on. If you would like to try this technique, I have explained the process here.

The third week we worked with ink and watercolor.

Judy Notestine3

This offered the most possibilities. We could choose to paint with ink and use varying values, splatter, draw with it with an eye dropper, a razor blade, or nib or spritz our applications of ink with a mister (spray bottle with water). The above ink and watercolor was also created on a grunged background. Here are some ink tutorials:

drawing with ink and razor blade

drawing with an eyedropper and spritzing

drawing with a nib and spritzing

using an elegant writer and watercolor

The fourth week we worked on a gouache resist.

Linda Flatley

In this technique, we used gouache to coat any area of our painting that would require color later. Once that dried, we coated a layer of waterproof ink over the top and allowed it to dry. Next, we rinsed the entire painting with water (hose is best) to remove the ink from the gouached areas. This leaves a block print-like image. We then paint the white areas once the surface has dried. If you would like to try this, I have explained the process here.

The last thing that everyone tried was a self portrait combining watercolor and collage. They could work on any surface they wanted to and could collage with any papers they wanted to.

Laura Lindsay

Kathy Smierciak4

We use a glue made with acrylic matte medium and water. There are many posts within my blog that discuss citrasolv collage and rice paper collage. Just insert either in the search block below and you will find explanations of these in the event you are interested in trying these techniques.

All the student’s works for this class can be found by clicking here.

Thank you to all the artists who have shared their work here. Have a great summer break!

A Tree Frog and a Rice Paper/Watercolor Abstract

These are the most recent two paintings I have finished. The tree frog has a saran wrap print background that I returned and painted in each abstract shape by following the pattern that the saran wrap left. To get that print, I wet the entire background with juicy watercolors. I was careful to not wet any portion of the frog. I then took large sheets of saran wrap and crinkled them atop the washes, covered it with another drawing board and added the weight of several books atop the board. I left this overnight for the pigment to dry before removing the saran wrap. If you remove the saran wrap too soon, the water will soften and sometimes disturb any design. The background came out too light, so I repainted each individual section wet on dry and wet-in-wet.

The rice paper abstract began with a grunge background like I explained here.

I layered in some watercolor I wanted to  use for this abstract and allowed it to dry.

I select various rice papers with textures and colors I think might go with what I already have and begin glueing them to the surface of the paper. I use a mixture of acrylic matte medium of one part water to four parts matte medium. I blot each paper as I glue it on so there is little glue residue left on the surface of the paper. I allow that initial layering to dry and paint or add gesso splatter and marks, more watercolor and ink  marks and allow that layer to dry.

finished painting

I alternate layers of media, in this manner, until I feel I have developed a center of interest and decide I am done.

Here is a another post that describes this process.

Bottles: Ink line and wash

I am still working with the elegant writer calligraphy pen. I introduced this pen as a drawing medium, recently, to my last beginning drawing class. I think it is excellent as a drawing tool as well as fun to use with watercolor. Here, I have used it to draw a still life of clear glass items.

Click here for an explanation of how you can use this pen for drawings and watercolors.

 

The Magnificent Toy

The above painting was done on a surface that I kind of made up myself. I have long admired paintings done on backgrounds that have been disturbed in some way, maybe by other mediums or by textures added with paper, etc. I studied several different journal artists’ videos and a couple of water media artists’ videos in order to come up with this. I like backgrounds with glued-in and sanded papers but was not able to come up with a background that the watercolor worked easily on. Those backgrounds seem to require some use of acrylics, also. I wanted to avoid that since I teach watercolor and I wanted my students to be able to experiment with this.

If you are interested, I have outlined the steps we took for creating a grunge background for our portraits.

We began by splattering or brushing on coffee. We dried this stage with a hairdryer before moving to the next application.

Next, we splattered and brushed on gesso. We did this in two different ways.  We watered down some of the gesso 50/50. That was so the marks would only partially show through the watercolor pigment. We, then, applied some of the gesso straight, knowing that our paint would slide off of it and reveal the white of the gesso. We then dried this, completely, before moving to the next stage.

In the next step, we watered down waterproof black ink and splattered that onto the paper. We could soften some of these marks by spritzing them with a spray bottle. This stage is better when you follow the less is more policy. Allow this stage to dry completely before proceeding.

After preparing the surface, we all looked for a portrait that might work well with the background we had come up with. We chose portraits just because it is a portrait class we are in right now. This kind of background would work for any subject. Once we found our portrait reference we wanted to use, we turned our splattered paper around until we found the best imagery in the splatter for what we wanted to paint on it. Note that I turned my paper around 180 degrees for my subject. We drew the portrait on in graphite.

The above is an example of my first washes. We just begin painting the portrait as we normally would.

When I arrived at this point, I began to make decisions about placing more darks and bringing the image of the toy and girl out of the background more. I really liked how the gesso and the ink added abstract effects that I had very little control over. We were able to go back in with gesso, coffee and ink if we wanted to. I was getting good results with just what I had. We also knew we could collage and use colored pencil or wax resist in areas we may need to.

The above is my finished portrait.

I hope this gives you something new to try or consider when you sit down to paint. I decided I would not be so hasty, in the future, to throw away a stained or soiled piece of watercolor paper. It may just be that it would add to a painting rather than detract!

 

New Student Art: Watercolor Plus Fun!

We just finished our last class of the school year 2014-2015 last night. I save this class until the end each year because it is composed of five different ways to use watercolor with other mediums. It is designed to stretch our creativity and give us other options to use when creating our paintings. It is probably the most challenging of the classes because these take an investment of time that some of the other classes don’t require.

Kathleen Smierciak2

The first week we worked on anything ink and watercolor.

Linda Flatley2

Jan Reche2

The second week we worked on Gouache Resist.

Mary Smierciak

Sue Joseph4

On the third week we learned how to make gesso juice, apply it to our paper and create texture in it.

Melissa Scare

Roxanne Yoquelet

The fourth week was devoted to learning how to treat National Geographic photos with CitraSolv to make beautifully colored collage papers and use them to create watercolor and collage paintings.

Nancy Longmate5

Ruth Karau3

On the fifth week we worked on creating paintings using wax resist.

On the sixth and last night everyone worked on a technique where they paint into a soaked piece of watercolor paper, developing the painting as it dries. They could even use pastels and work them into the watercolor.

If you would like to view the other paintings created by these students you can click here or scroll to the top of the page and click on the page that says Student Art: Watercolor Plus 2015.

Thank you to all my students who shared their work here! 🙂

Ink and Watercolor: Curly Dog

  This is another ink and watercolor. I used frisket and inked lines with a #4 round brush this time, prior to spritzing it with water as in the elephant. After all that dried, I washed in the colors. I then removed the friskit and went back in with watercolor and ink. The last thing I did was splatter with a small rigger. Thank you to wet canvas for the beautiful reference image of this dog.

Bald Eagle: Ink with Watercolor

 

The above painting began with a simple line drawing of a bald eagle. I used liquid frisket, masking fluid, to save the white of his hooded head, beak, talons and stripes between his wing feathers. I outlined the drawing using an eye dropper filled with waterproof black ink. Before those lines dried, I spritzed the ink drawing with water, creating all that blotchy and flecked look to the wings. For the eagles body, shoulders and legs, I wet the entire area with water and dropped ink along the outer edges (along the white of the hood, over the shoulders and along the eagle’s left wing) and allowed it to flow into the water. That left that lighter area along his shoulder and down into his left leg. After all the ink dried, I removed the frisket and painted the remainder of the piece with watercolor. It is the same process that I spoke of when I created this elephant. This gives you the idea of how the black and white looks prior to painting. Don’t be too concerned with the bleeding of the ink. It begins to come together more as you add color. You can view two more eyedropper and ink creations here and here.

I really enjoy exploring adding other media with watercolor. Some subjects just beg for a little something extra.