Bennington Mugs painting for Class

This is the painting I have prepared for tomorrow night's intermediate watercolor class. For the subject I selected my favorite mugs - from Bennington Pottery in Vermont - which we received as a wedding present almost 50 years ago. I have always loved their beautiful lines and they are so unique since they are all individually hand made.

The painting is small - 8" x 6" and is painted on 140 lb. Canson cold-pressed watercolor paper.

Poured Painting - Finally Finished

Well - I have finally finished the poured painting that was a demonstration for Donna Clark's watercolor class in Troy, Ohio. (and which is in a previous post in this blog.) This is almost a full sheet of Arches cold-pressed 140 lb. watercolor paper. The underpainting was poured with acrylic inks and the detailing and negative painting areas were done with transparent watercolor. The white areas on the petals were masked with Pebeo liquid mask.

Blossom Time 2

This is a painting I prepared for the intermediate watercolor class I am teaching at the Riverside Arts Center this winter session. We have class for 3 hours for 8 mondays - and it started 2 weeks ago. This painting is a rework of one I painted from a photo by Sue Drennon, a Watercolor Workshop friend, which I posted in June of 2009. This is larger than the first one, is 13" x 11" and is painted on 140 lb. cold-pressed Arches watercolor paper with mostly Holbein watercolors. My students did very well on this one and I plan to post a picture of them with their paintings soon.

Pouring Demonstration in Troy

I was fortunate to be asked to demonstrate my pouring technique to the intermediate watercolor class taught by my old friend, Donna Pierce Clark, in Troy, Ohio, at the Hayner Cultural Center on Tuesday, January 12th. It was so great connecting with her again after 35 years. We were young art teachers together here in the county in the early 1970's. These pictures were taken by Donna during the demo. Thank you for sharing the pics, Donna!

Start at the bottom of this post and work your way here to the top to be in correct sequence:

My next step will be to complete the detailing and the negative painting around the flowers and then I will remove the mask and soften any edges that need it. I will post the finished painting here on the blog when it is complete.

This is a close-up of some of the detailing from the inside of the flower.

In this picture, I have done some negative painting around some of the petals, and am adding some of the detailing inside the flower.

In this photograph I am pouring my greens on the very wet paper. I used a large medicine eye-dropper to suck up some of the excess paint at this time

In this stage I am adding the second color, which is a warm red-violet. I allow it to run and mingle with the violet already on the surface

The first color I am dropping into the wet painting is violet. I attempt to keep it inside the petal shapes, but will not be upset if some of it flows into the background.

The drawing is complete and mask has been added to protect the whites around the outide of each petal in the flowers. I am using a wide watercolor wash brush to wet the paper. I want the entire surface to be wet, but not in puddles because I will be adding much wet paint to the surface. I will be using liquid acrylic inks mixed with water for the pouring stage because once the ink is dry, it will not be lifted by my brushes when I am doing the detailing and negative painting with watercolors.

"Frida" by Rhonda Carpenter

I was the lucky winner and recipient of this small painting of Frida Kahlo, done by Rhonda Carpenter, as part of her end of the year give-away on her blog, Watercolors and Words, which is a link on my blog. Along with this painting, I received some goodies - beautiful little "Frida" prints, all in a beautiful card. Thank you, Rhonda. Now to find just the right frame for this little "Gem!"

This is one of my attempts at painting with Yupo paper. I decided that this one would be loose. I started it at a workshop and finished it at home. I used halloween spiderwebbing stretched across the paper and then did my watercolor wash on top of the webbing. I like lots of color, so I used lots of color on the wash. After the wash dried, I removed the webbing and added the detailing with more watercolor. I also lifted areas of color for emphasis. I like Yupo because it forces me to be loose, but to be truthful, it really isn't me!

Patty's Pink Iris

I did this painting from a photograph I took of an iris grown by my friend Patty Magoto. She has the most beautiful flowers and the only problem with painting them is that I can never do them justice. This painting is 1/4 sheet of Arches 140 lb. watercolor paper with assorted watercolors.