OLDIES AGAIN

This is the same scene as the last post, and I followed what was in my slide reference much closer than I really needed to. It was great to create textures on the gessoed paper, which made it easier to create the look of tile roofs and stuccoed walls.

Cropping off the bottom fourth of the painting might help the compositon a bit. Those big foreground rocks don't really invite the viewer into the painting too well. I seldom paint on gessoed paper this way anymore since YUPO crept into my life.

To see a great interpretation of a cool YUPO portrait, go to Myrna Wacknov's blog - http://myrnawacknov.blogspot.com/ - for her September 10th post. She paints on another unusual surface that I've also used several times - Tyvek - (just like the stuff builders use but without the waterproof coating.)

Compare this post to my previous post to see changes and improvements. This one was the first one done of the two.

"MORNING VISITOR" Transparent Watercolor on 140#CP Arches covered with White Gesso COLLECTED

OLDIES TIME

Whew. The remnants of Hurricane Ike blew through here Sunday afternoon, and over half a million people in this area are still without power. We'd been in northern Indiana where an ocean of leftover rain from Ike was being dumped, and as we got nearer to home that evening, we were stunned by the damage here. No rain, just wind. Hurricane force winds - category 1 - only 70- 84 miles an hour for 3 hours. Our oak trees and ash trees don't bend as easily as palm trees do.

We got off easy compared to coastal cities, but the damage is still incredibly bad. I cannot imagine the terror of being in a true hurricane. We suffered only very minor damage here at our house - limbs down, etc., and our round sweet gum tree looks like someone blasted a very high power dryer into one side of it. And all this happened over a thousand miles from where Ike made landfall!

For the next couple of weeks, I've decided to post paintings I've done from times gone by. Some of the paintings will show that it does make a difference how many years an artist holds a paint brush. Most artists agree - the more you paint, the better you get, although not every painting will be successful.

Someone once said that if you paint one out of three good ones, you are a pro. Of course, the ones we consider good when we paint them may not look so great a few years later if we've improved.

Painted on watercolor paper covered with white gesso, this small town in Spain is one that my folks visited years ago. Gessoed paper is a very close cousin to YUPO because the paint sits on top, not soaking into the paper very much at all. The colors seem to be a little more vibrant, too, on this gessoed surface.

The first time I painted on gesso, I felt like I was painting opn an oil slick since the paint floated on top of the paper. The colors were so vivid. I was hooked.

This painting is about ten years old, and over the course of a couple of years, I painted it several different ways, but always on gessoed paper. The next post will be one very similar to this one, painted about a year earlier.

"VISITOR" Transparent Watercolor on 140#CP Arches, Covered with White Gesso COLLECTED