Just Keep Working

Stubbornness is a quality that can be a blessing and a curse. For my art life, obstinacy comes forth when I create a painting that does not come out as well as I hope, yet I don't want to shred it. If you read my last blog I talked about working on a paper that sometime in the past I'd applied a substance, matte medium, keeping the paper from absorbing watercolor paints. 

It was a struggle to put paint on it and when done the painting needed to be cropped leaving only the top of the painting to be worked on. Today I finished it in a way that I am satisfied enough to put it in a frame and say "done"! 

Here are the steps of creating "Round and Round They Go."

The beginning sketch

The initial painting must be cropped as only the top has hope!

I reworked the pond and plants by adding more leaves 

and eliminating the blue in the middle of the plants.

Today I decided to create a window in the piece to emphasize the important part,

the fish. I did this by protecting  the center and using the mouth atomizer to spray

a dark blue green. Now I can frame it and move on! 

Always Learning

Yesterday I grabbed a 1/2 sheet (22" x 15") of white watercolor paper out of a drawer to start a new piece. My intent was to make a painting that would simplify the elements of my pond in a more abstract form. The shape of the pond itself explains, in part, my inspiration for my recent Kimono/Pond paintings, so confining the water into a kimono shape was the start of the painting.

The elements I wanted to include are Kimono shaped water, plants, rocks, and fish.

Surprise! As I put paint on the paper, the paper didn't absorb the paint. I had picked up a piece of paper that sometime in the past I had covered with a coat of matte medium which prevents the paper from soaking up the watercolor. So what could I do? I could have moved on to using gouache or acrylic or ditched the sheet and picked out a plain watercolor paper, but I have this stubborn experimental streak, so I continued with transparent watercolor. Here are some things I learned: 

one must let the liquid paint dry before adding more paint

the color can be easily lifted

it's hard to get a flat looking area 

there are little white parts that will not take color

and finally, I doubt I'll try this again.

The good part of this adventure is that I persevered and learned some stuff.

Let me know what you think of the results and scroll down to check out Mike's advise.

Mike's thoughts--crop it.