Colimilla - Poured Watercolor

Colimillia is such cute little town.  It is in the lagoon by Barra de Navidad, another charming town in Mexico.  Both are about 40 minutes north of Manzanillo.   They were hit by a hurricane a couple of weeks ago and many of the buildings on the beach in Barra were badly damaged.  Colimilla was protected from the waves by being in the lagoon but I think there might have been some flooding.  We will be visiting there soon and I'm anxious to see how the people in both towns are doing.  The hurricane was only a category 2 luckily.  It was supposed to be a category 3 when it hit land but fortunately it lost some of its power.

I painted this from a couple of pictures I took last spring.  I love the serene feeling of the calm water and the setting sun.  The pangas (small boats), like the one in this painting, go between the several restaurants in Colimilla and the Grand Bay Hotel and Barra de Navidad.  It looks like it's time for a cocktail - and maybe some ceviche and coconut shrimp.  : )

This is the first poured painting that I've tried.  I went to a demo by Linda Baker a couple of weeks ago and this is the technique that she uses.  Of course, she made it look really easy.  I wouldn't say that it was hard but there is definitely a learning curve.  The next one will be much easier.  I really like the look that pouring watercolor gives to a painting.  It has a very graphic quality, which you should know by now is the look that attracts me to a painting.  I can't wait to try it again.

After saying in the last post that I was done painting flowers for awhile, the first thing I started working on the next day was a floral that I'd started last spring.  Sigh.....  At least this post isn't flowers but I'm afraid next week's probably will be but they will NOT be pink!

Colimilla
Image size 11" x 18"
Watercolor

Bougainvillea Mexicana

Here is it.  Can you believe it?  I actually did something I said I was going to do.  This is the watercolor version of the bougainvillea silk painting that I did last week.  Many times I say I'm going to do this painting or that painting and they never get posted.  That's because they never get painted.  I guess I have more ideas of what to paint than the motivation to paint them.  I get easily distracted by new ideas and the old ones just get forgotten.  I should probably write them down for those times that I can't think of anything to paint.

This is a large painting and I really had to work hard to finish it for today.  I fought with the paper the whole time.  It is on Arches 300# rough.  I'm not sure what I was thinking when I chose that paper for a floral.  Maybe because the wall was stucco I thought it would be a good choice.  I drew this and painted the background quite some time ago so I don't really remember my thought process.  Also, though I love the heavier papers, it is really hard to get some of the color mixtures and effects that I want.  I was hoping to paint the shadows with a looser, more watery feeling but didn't think I could get that with the heavier paper.  The edges were drying creepy (I mean creepy crawly, not creepy scary, even though it's Halloween)  instead of blurry like I wanted.   Also, when I floated the colors blends on the paper they looked beautiful but because the paper took so long to dry, the paints blended together too much and lost the effect that they had when they were wet so I was unhappy with that aspect of the painting too.  I had to do a lot more glazes to get the effect I wanted. That seems to happen on the 300# cold press paper too but the Arches 300# hot press seems very different in how it accepts the paint and is one of my favorite papers which is weird because I hate their 140# hot press.  That paper is very hard for me to work on because I like my paints to blend smoothly and that doesn't happen easily on the lighter weight hot press.  Maybe if I didn't wear my glasses while I paint I would relax and not worry about things like that because they would look blended.  : )

Anyway, enough about paper.  I'm sure those of you that aren't artists are yawning by now.  I'm really pretty happy with this painting even though I was cursing at it while I was working on it.  Maybe that helped.  I'm not sure what I'll paint next but it won't be flowers.  As much as I like them, I'm sick of them for now, especially pink flowers!

Bougainvillea Mexicana
Image size 22" x 30"
Watercolor

Wrought Iron Bougainvillea - Silk Painting

Last week I taught my niece how to paint on silk and that made me miss silk painting so I decided to paint one this week.  I have some photos of bougainvillea against an orange building and am working on painting it in watercolor so I thought I would try painting it using silk dyes on silk also.  It has a completely different look than the watercolor painting.

I was planning to put shadows from the bougainvillea on the wall but felt that this design was already too busy and the shadows  probably wouldn't read right in a silk painting.  I am going to make the shadows fairly important in the watercolor painting.  That painting doesn't have the wrought iron so it's busy in a different way.

In this painting, I used salt to give a suggestion of stucco in the wall but the color I used didn't react very much with the salt.  I probably had the color too light.  I also experimented with using colored resists for parts of the details but need to go darker next time.  It's all a learning experience, right?

By the way, my niece is a natural at the silk painting.  Her painting is turning out great and she's already planning her next project.  Silk painting is VERY addictive but it's a pretty healthy addiction.

Wrought Iron Bougainvillea
Image Size 15.5" x 23.25"
Silk dyes on silk
Stretched but unframed

Orvieto

I took the photo for this painting in 2005 in Orvieto, Italy.  It's such a charming town and I love this scene.  In fact, I painted it before in a landscape format twice as large.  For this painting,  I wanted to use the portrait format to emphasize the height of the building in the foreground.  Also, this one is painted more loosely and colorfully.  I never took a picture of the original painting and although it is hanging in our home, I'm too lazy to try to take a picture of it through the glass.  They never seem to come out well without a lot of reflections anyway so you will just have to imagine what it looks like.  : )

Orvieto

Image Size 22" x 15"

Watercolor

Palau Beach

Palau Beach sounds like it should be in the South Pacific and looks like it would be there or in the Caribbean but it is in Sardinia.  That is the location for Virtual Paintout this month.  I didn't know where Sardinia was and in case you don't either, it's in the mediterranean off the coast of Italy (and is part of Italy) just below the island of Corsica (which is part of France).  I was attracted to the cloud formations and the beautiful color of the water.  This is an oil painted on a 3/4" thick gallery wrapped canvas with the sides painted and doesn't need a frame.

Palau Beach
Image Size 8" x 16"
Oil

California Vineyard

A friend gave me some velour paper - I'm not sure that's what it's called but that's what it looks like to me.  I know they make mat board with a velour or sueded surface and this seems the same but is a paper.  This piece was a bright yellow and I planned to have bits of it showing through but that didn't happen.  It was hard to get a clean looking sky because of the yellow and I had intended to have a clear, blue sky but the clouds seemed to work better with that yellow base.

This is a picture I took at a vineyard up in Buellton, CA.  In the photo, it was a beautiful, cloudless day but not anymore when a little artistic license is used.  Clouds are so much fun to do, especially in pastels.  This paper had such a velvety surface, it was easy to get the cloud effects I wanted.

I have some more of the paper in bright yellow, bright blue, bright kelly green and beige so you will probably be seeing more pastels done on this surface in the near future.

Thanks for the paper, Beverly!

California Vineyard
Image size 8" x 8"
Pastels

Cactus Flower-watercolor on TerraSkin

I'm still playing around with the TerraSkin paper surface.  I love the watery effects I can get with it and it forces me to paint more loosely.  I took some pictures of cacti flowering at Sherman Gardens a while ago and had been wanting to try painting them.  The flowers on these cacti are so beautiful I will probably paint them many times in several mediums.  This is a very small painting but I think a huge painting of these would be amazing.

Cactus Flower
Image Size 5.5" x 4"
Watercolor

Stone Hollihocks- TerraSkin

What a weird title for this painting, right?  Well, it's painted on "stone" of a sort.  I found out about this new "paper" from a blogger (sorry I don't remember who) and hunted it down because I just had to try it.  It is called TerraSkin and is made from 75-80% stone (recycled calcium carbonate, the mineral in marble) and an environmentally friendly polyethylene resin.  It uses about 50% less energy to produce, no bleach and little to no water.  It is also acid free.  When I heard about it, I couldn't wait to try it.  I'm always looking for interesting substrates for my art.

One of the environmental perks of this "paper" is that it is biodegradable in 3-9 months with enough heat, moisture and sun.  Of course, I don't want my art degrading but I would imagine that a piece of regular paper would be destroyed much, much quicker in that type of environment than this surface would.  Remember people, don't put your art in the direct sun and definitely don't put your paintings in the landfill and expect for them to survive. : )

This paper has a wonderful chalky feel to it and it comes in various weights.  I think this painting is done on the heaviest paper.  The paint sits on the surface much like on yupo (I'm talking about watercolors) but I think this surface is more forgiving in a few instances.  I started a completely different design on this paper and erased all of it and that didn't seem to change the surface of the paper.  With Yupo, I've found that erasing is a big no no.  Also, fingerprints don't seem to be such an issue with this paper as they are with Yupo.  Lifting paint was similar when the paint was freshly dried but seemed to be a little harder to lift as it sat longer.  It could still be lifted but didn't feel as impermanent as on Yupo and it was easier to get a blended edge when lifting instead of being either white or the color.  Of course, I have NOT had much luck working on Yupo so for those of you that know what you're doing, these issues are probably not even problems for you.

I like the TerraSkin surface and look forward to painting on a large piece of it.  I really like the effect of the paints on this paper, which is similar to the look on Yupo, but working on TerraSkin seems easier.

I would love to hear from anyone that has painted on this surface with watercolor and what your experiences have been.

Stone Hollihocks
Image Size 5.5" x 4"
Watercolor

Bougainvillea in Colored Pencil

I really need to get some new reference material!  I love bougainvillea but I think I've painted them enough!  We have been traveling and I needed something to work on while on the plane.  Colored pencils are the best medium for me in this instance because it doesn't take much space and if there is turbulence, there are no spills.  There were a few pencil skips during turbulence but it worked out okay.

I am so amazed by artists that use colored pencil as their primary medium.  It is a very time consuming process and being stuck on a plane is about the only time I have enough patience to work with them.  It sure makes me appreciate the skills and time needed to finish a colored pencil painting.  This is a small one and it took many hours more than if it was done in any other medium that I use.  Even though I really like the look of colored pencils that have been burnished, I didn't burnish this one because there was a bit too much texture in the paper, even though it is a hot pressed watercolor paper.  I usually like using smooth Bristol paper for colored pencils.  This paper did have a little more tooth to hold more layers of color, which was nice, so I guess each type of paper has its pros and cons.

Bougainvillea in Colored Pencil
Image Size 7" x 10"
Colored Pencil

Lake Powell Reflections

I'm really enjoying these watery, loose paintings.  I know I will go back an forth between painting like this and really tight but variety is fun.  As much as I like really controlling the watercolor, wet into wet painting gives beautiful effects.

Lake Powell Reflections
Image Size 22" x 15"
Watercolor