Yupo Demo for Jan 23 Florida class....

It's fun to re-visit a medium you have come to enjoy so much. This is done on a half sheet of translucent Yupo paper with white paper behind it.

One of the positives about the see-through paper is you can do a drawing and then lay it on top and trace so easily. Although this toucan was a pretty easy drawing...I like the objects in Yupo paintings to be fairly simple with lots of empty spaces for me to play and experiment in.

This is a demo I am doing for my Hawthorne Park friends for Monday's class. I am not done...it's so much fun to add and subtract some of the textures in the background.

And it is fun to pick a subject that has bright interesting colors. I am an avid fan of George James and I'll be showing the class about half an hour of the first of his 3 part series called "Mastering Yupo: Techniques for Synthetic Paper." You can find those wonderful foam rollers he uses at WalMart for about $2.50.

Fracturing Clematis

Clematis: (noun) a climbing plant of the buttercup family that bears white, pink, or purple flowers and feathery seeds.

Tip: When you put away paintings that seem to "have no future" be sure to tape the original photo references (if there is one) to the back.

I am in the process of a BIG New Year's cleaning of my studio. My experiment with this watercolor might never have happened without the reference photos...and it has been such fun. After Peg Furlin's workshop (fracturing wc on canvas) I decided to try the technique on regular wc paper.

The downside of this is the inability to be able to get back completely to white as you can with canvas. But I took the painting to the sink and used a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser sponge to it and took the painting down to a pale image of it's former self. I let it try overnight. (Left it on homosote board and I did not need to tape it down or staple it and it helps to soak out the moisture. It dried quite flat.)

Then I measured my imaginary mat (just as I did on canvas) and proceeded to draw fracturing lines lightly with pencil. The process of figuring out how to show the flowers and enjoy the fracturing and keeping a center of interest is challenging. I think as I critique it...I may need more of a third contrasting color in the painting which is mostly shades of rose and green. There is some purple in the painting which does not show very well in the indoor lighting. So this painting may not be done. Anyone have any suggestions. I think this is a very feasible way to re-do a painting that has fallen flat for some other reason.

My Drawing Class

I feel badly I haven't been posting very regularly. I can think of excuses...but they are not very creative ones. So I'll skip those.

Instead I will mention that I am in a 6 part drawing class (two sessions) taught by Lucina Roark here in Leesburg, FL.

SO much information! She is is really trying to give us a big general overview and allowing us a lot of freedom in different ways that we can respond through practice. We DO have homework! This one is to draw an egg (two times) in two different drawing media such as ink, pastel, charcoal or graphite. I took on ink crosshatching and right off the bat am in pretty rough territory. Leave it to me. Getting the nuances of shadow with cross hatching is going to be a BIG challenge (and I used a small pen too!). Uh oh. But we do have two weeks before the next class!

Our first drawing challenge included drawing our own hands. These are graphite 4B and 6B using a stump for shading.

Oh boy. These have a ways to go also! But it's a start!

I found some pretty nice Strathmore 400 series drawing paper "buy one, get one free" sale at Michaels up in The Villages on Monday. 14 x 17- 80# which I think will hold me in good stead during the classes.