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"
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10 comments:
Lovely! Who would ever think this was a reworked painting?
Thanks for sharing,
xoxo
your paintings are so cool Sandy! I love the chickadee and the cliffs below. your are a master of the yupo!
What a perky little chickadee and I like the instruction on this one :) Hope you are enjoying your workshop.
Amazing how many different techniques and media you used to rescue this bird! He's great. I am disappointed that you are organizing your blog so only one post comes up at a time now. I find it so annoying to have to hit "old post" over and over and again to get backwards and read older ones. You used to have at least a dozen posts show up. Why did you change that?
Great results, Sandy.:) What a save! Having no idea what the original painting looked like, one would never guess this is a do-over. You make me want to try Yupo more and more. Wetting charcoal pencil? I never heard of that one before but it's most effective here.
You more than saved part of an old painting...you created a thing of beauty. Thank you for sharing your techniques with us. I have never tried Yupo, but whenever I see your work, I am very tempted to try it.
Sandy, thanks for sharing some of your wonderful techniques with YUPO. Does the salt get "glued" onto the paper since you are using acrylic? When I used salt on Tyvek, it brushed away when dry but took all the paint with it!
What a wonderful painting! It's even more special that it was salvaged!
That was amazing! I love the way you work on Yupo. Did you wipe the whole thing off before you started the new painting or did you just wipe some of the old painting off?
Thanks to each of you for commenting. Yupo is just so free-ing to work on. You've got to try it as well as go see what Rhonda's created on YUPO from her last mini vacation. Click on her name in the comments if you haven't been there yet.
Myrna, the salt does rub off, but do so carefully so it doesn't leave a scratch mark.
Ginny, nothing's changed on my blog, but lately I've had some trouble on other blogs seeing their pix. Google must be 'fixing' things that don't need to be fixed. Anyone else have trouble getting more than one post per page? I have mine set at 40 per page.
And Cape Coral Joyful Artist, I did wipe off as much as I thought I didn't need, knowing I could easily scribble in more paint, etc. to add to the background. I really wiped out the area in the middle. The original painting was a still life of some blue and green glass bottles, and I only used part of sheet of that original painting to make this one.
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