DISASTER NO MORE

Some paintings sit in a drawer for a very long time before they're pitched. And some paintings get to be reinvented, like this one was.

To show the YUPO workshoppers how to 'save' an old YUPO painting, I began by wiping off some of the old paint from the still life that was on this YUPO paper. Since it had been drawn on originally with pencil, I used a tissue dampened with rubbing alcohol to help lighten some of the graphite lines. Then I scribbled more graphite lines to diminish the importance of the remaining recognizable image and lightened them too with the alcohol.

Next, I added some scribbles of charcoal pencil, applied wet, so that it was intense, then painted over much of the existing watercolor, graphite, and charcoal mess with fluid acrylics. I purposely shaped an inner light area for containing the focus of the painting.

After drawing in the chickadee with a Derwent watercolor pencil, making sure to tie it into the background somewhere, I lifted out the shape of the bird from the existing paint and began painting her in with the fluid acrylics, using them like watercolor. Popcorn salt applied to the damp acrylics helped create a bit of fluff to the bird's feathers.

The strong darks on the bird were made with the wet charcoal pencil. Finally, some branches were suggested using a squeegee and paint. Twigs were sketched in using the charcoal pencil.

It's a small sized painting and took less than an hour to complete. Lots of fun, no risk, saved part of an old painting ..... thank goodness the demo worked. Life is too good!

"SURPRISE VISITOR" Transparent Watercolor, Fluid Acrylics, and Charcoal Pencil Medium on YUPO 12 x 9"

YUPO DEMO #1

The first morning of this weekend's workshop, everyone stretched artistically as they experimented with various ways to manipulate paint on the slick YUPO paper. In the afternoon, they all watched me demo this painting on YUPO while incorporating as many of the techniques as possible.

Over the course of two days, we used not only brushes, but also foam paint rollers, squeegees, pieces of squeegees, Q-Tips, Halloween webbing, stamps, cheese cloth, watercolor pencils, Caran d'Ache crayons, inks, and charcoal to create our unique art.

This watercolor painting has Caran d'Ache crayons embellished over areas that needed to be settled down a bit. By quieting certain spots, other areas seemed even more colorful, due to the grayed down shapes beside them. The Caran d'Ache crayons are water soluble and can be rubbed and smudged even if they're dry in order to blend them into the painted shapes.

The two back packers along the top of the ridge were a happy accident. Working on YUPO is so much fun! More to come soon from our Yupo workkshop, but I'm also off to another workshop with international artist, Alvaro Castagnet, this week.

"BACKPACKERS" Transparent Watercolor and Caran d'Ache Crayons on YUPO 19 x 26"

ONLY TWO DAYS

Our YUPO workshop concluded today and really should have been a three day affair. The Fluid Acrylics and other supplies shown here are all that's left in the studio now that everyone's packed up and gone home.

Eleven artists explored and experimented with various ways to create art on the slick YUPO surface. I took pictures yesterday of all of them working, but completely forgot today to ask to take photos of their paintings. RATS! You simply can't begin to imagine how creative and unique each masterpiece was.

Later this week, watch for some posts of the demos as well as several corrections made on my previously posted paintings. One of my childhood friends, Betsy, drove down from our hometown to help out. Thank goodness for her being here because my energy level isn't quite at the top yet... knee surgery 5 wks ago. THANK YOU, Betsy, for all your support. It was so good to be with you, and I so appreciated all your help.

We painted with transparent watercolor all day yesterday on the YUPO, then today we jumped out into the wild using Fluid Acrylics, charcoal, acrylic inks, as well as Caran d'Ache Crayons to embellish our YUPO work.

Texture was the name of the game, and the compositions were singing with glorious color.

Their work was very good, which was especially awesome considering that several of the workshoppers had never ever painted on YUPO before. It was a great weekend!