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.
