Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Bird of Paradise Study, 30 in 30 - Day 28

This is painted on a very rough piece of watercolor paper but it is another piece of paper that has lost its sizing.  Do I care?  No!  I'm actually beginning to learn how to paint under these conditions which tells you that I bought way too much watercolor paper quite a long time ago.

Only a couple of days left on this challenge and I'm so ready for it to be over.  I may change things up for the last two days (I've given up on the idea of going through the 31st) and do WIP photos of a large painting that I've been working on instead of doing small paintings that don't make me happy.

Bird of Paradise Study
Image Size 4" x 6"
Watercolor



10 comments:

  1. Nancy I'm not sure what effect loss of sizing has on watercolor painting, but I do love the texture of the paper visible here.

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    1. Thank you Deborah. The loss of sizing makes the paper act like a blotter and sort of deadens the colors. It's also hard to blend color.

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  2. I love this one, it's so colorful and luminous!

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  3. I love what you've done here, Nancy. This is just super stunning!

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  4. I've experienced that problem with old paper too, but never managed to paint anything worth keeping. This is very beautiful. Congratulations on figuring out how to work around the problem. Did you start on the background so you knew what you had by the time you tackled the brights of the flower itself maybe? I wish that I would learn to test the paper before I start, because it's often the very first few strokes that ruin what I THOUGHT I was going to paint.

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    1. Thank you Katherine. I did start with the background and that area seemed to be the most affected by the missing sizing.

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  5. I guess since I haven't worked in watercolor a lot, I didn't know the paper would lose its sizing. I have a lot of it and one large pad hasn't even come out of its cellophane wrapping.

    I love this flower and this is a very nice piece.

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    1. Thank you Suzan. I hope your watercolor paper is still good. If the sizing is gone, you can coat the paper with a mix of 50% matte medium (acrylic) and 50% water. That seals the paper to keep it from acting like a blotter. It is still a different surface to work on but a bit more predictable than without it.

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