slow
You ARE talking about painting, I gather.
JL--I vary between photo realistic and very wet watercolors.In all cases I use a very heavy smooth surface paper. (I like a 3 to 400 lb) ON my very wet paintings I use a sketch laid down first, then I follow up with wherever I want latex frisket. Then I throw the paper in a bathtub full of water with a small amt of detergent. I leave the paper in for a few hours and then bring it out and lay it out wet and work on a glass surface with a stretch mechanism that one of my bteachers taught me, its a wooden frame that clamps onto the glass, then tightens up by corner clamps on the glass. I let the paper dry about a half hour. Then I paint with pure colr without mixing. I use a very fine milled pigment like senellier . I let it run and then, when its run and dried , I finish with small washes of color and suggestions of realistic forms around my sketch. I remove my frisket and then wash with a final light color, usually a straw or very weak vermillion.
Brown is always a biatch right out of the tube. I always mix viridian and rose madder to create browns to blacks. Gives em a depth and they dont look flat like the tube colors.
On my photo realistic works, I use a watercolr pencil to sketch the painting. In these I often use a projection or a tracing from my working sketches so I dont futz with erasing on the paper. In this method I keep the paper very dry and paint from the top corner to the bottom, except when I want to lay down a local wash, like smoke in a donkey engine along a quarry wall. In a local was, I lay down water around the AREA I want to make the wash. then I create a small dry spot in the center in which I lay down pure color so that the color touches all the edges of the water. Then I let it run and it creates a wispy pattern that contrasts the tight remainder of the painting.
Watercolor is a collection of happy accidents that we learn to conjur by learning more and more tricks. the watercolor books by David Lynch have always been good for starting to learn the tricks, and if you can find a book by the late Ted Kautsky, you will see how these tricks are applied by a real master. Of corse thats my feeling, I could be wrong
JLN - yes - paint!
Farmerman - sounds very complex, do you have any work online we could view?
wc
Wrong? I doubt it. Thanks.
I never learned watercolors, although I used them as sort-of-regular paints, some time ago.
wonderful, how every medium has it's own ways.
JL, I copied that one for you. Farmerman, you truly are a man of many talents and patience. What does the detergent do to the paper? One of the artists at the gallery has a stretcher board that he staples the paper to which is really cool. I was taught to soak the paper over night and then tape it onto a large board. Being anal expulsive, I shy away from rules and just paint on the paper after I hit with the shower massage. I prefer 140 Arches over 300 because the 300 has a tendency to suck up the paint. BUT 300 is a selling point over 140. Does the detergent offer more resistance to the "sucking up?" Have anyone used block paper?
kayla-Dtergent acts as a flow medium sort of like ox-gall fluid. I use about 1/2 tsp in a bathtub filled to about 6 inches. It keeps the watercolor from binding and impeding its flow and spread . When I do wet I really like to promote the fluidity. many times, in the past ive used light weight paper and let the colors run and then Id decide what the picture was looking like and Id just embellish the forming picture. A couple years ago I did a series of ducklings in a whole series of accidental works. They were wonderful and easy to do.
I dont have any works on the web , but we are having a web site put together for my business. Im going to have some of my works as intros to various pages.
I especially like the heaviest weight papers cause they hold the moisture longer and they take more abuse, and, feel that the heavier the weight, the easier to hold it in a stretch.
i dont like Whatman or Fabriano because they lose wet washes. by being almost too absorbent, sort of like paper towels. Arches and Kilimanjaro are my favorites.
Im going to load some works as soon as I figure out the best way to shoot them. Im starting to not like digital cameras for overall work because the suck up a lot of card memory and , in the real cold, their batteries have an appetite .
F-man - get a scanner.....
wc
Thanks, Kayla.
Anal EXPULSIVE? Damn it; I've been describing myself all these years as anal EXPRESSIVE.
Anal repressive: I don't give a POOP.
Anal expulsive: POOP on you!!!!
Bastardized Sigmund Freud. I love it.
anal expressive
Then what's anal aggressive? So confusing. :wink:
Someone on this thread has a paint brush stuck where the sun don't shine?
wc
Be not concerned, LW; I got it out.
JL, you and I need some avatars. im looking for one that will display me. im trying to find an old bearded coot on a motorcycle with a rock hammer in one hand and a paint brush in the other. Maybe Ill have to draw one .
Wheres yours?
wc
I don't have one because I'm Nobody. Actually I havn't made the effort to find out how to install one. I'll get on it eventually. I'm an old bearded coot too so I hope we'll not be competing for the same avatar.
Ok now you guys are committed here is the link to the avatar tutorial:
http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=47
This part I like the student guiding the teachers.
wc
Dear no-nonsense Joanne; you are the best.
Just one of those old organizer's trained by the AFL-CIO and a graduate of the University of Hard Knocks.
wc
JD: Like the new cyber-me? I chose the cat in honor of my father whose nickname was Cat because of his green eyes--which we share. My wife use to say I had eyes like green grapes, but now, she says, they're like raisons. Oh well. At least she likes raisons.
