A Milestone

This afternoon, I was playing with my watercolors. I got this book out of the library, called Watercolors: A new way to learn how to paint. I'm not bothering to link to the book because it was very simplistic and not very helpful. The one good point it made was that with watercolors, you have to be patient and allow them to dry before working with adjacent sections.

Blah, blah, get your paintbrush loaded with color. More color is more vivid, add water to dilute it. Duh. Blah, blah, add water and move the color across the page for a wash, more and more water for a graduated wash. Blah, blah, draw your outlines in with pencil ... wait, what? You have to learn to draw first? Bah, humbug.

What I do have is a cheap set of watercolors, the kind you get at Target or Walmart, a recently-purchased set of brushes that have turned out to be simply luscious to work with, and lots and lots of watercolor paper pads.
 No, really, a lot.

Sometimes I chide my daughter for being a hoarder, but when it comes to art supplies, I'm the hoardest. Sketch pads, white and grey and tan, all different sizes; colored construction paper in four sizes (and multiples of each); pastel papers in a pad that I lusted for and can't bring myself to spoil with my crappy art; oil canvases in their myriads; watercolor paper. Unless I get my ass into very high gear, I will never use up what I have hoarded in the studio before I die.

Today, however, something new happened. I pulled four sheets of watercolor paper for "stretching" (soaking with water and flattening on a polyurethaned board so they don't buckle), two of Strathmore paper and two of Bienfang. Since I can't do anything with them until they are dry, I got another sheet of Strathmore and used some watercolor pencils to draw some geometric shapes, then filled them in with paint. But I wasn't ready to be done; I got a reference photo from my digital pics, put it up on the laptop (the old one that came back from the dead) and ... tore the last sheet of paper from the 9 x 12 Strathmore pad.

It's ... empty.

Empty.

I worked on the new watercolor for a while, and had some success with it before I had to stop for the night. I peek at my art work, always surprised at what comes out of my hands and brain, but what my eyes keep coming back to is that empty pad. Cover, backing, nothing more.

My guess is that it's been a quarter of a century since I used up a pad.

But I discovered yesterday an interesting function of Photoshop that yielded some VERY interesting results, and as I said before, I love this new Prolene brush, so maybe I'll break some records.

A shame my husband reads my blog, otherwise I could show him the empty watercolor pad and convince him to buy me five more.

More Watercolor Play

This was today's effort, practicing washes.

It went a little better today; I decided to tape four blank note-cards to the board and fiddle with washes on them. If nothing else, the paint puts a little color on cards I can use as "thank yous."

The top left seems agreeable, though not successful as a flat wash. The top right is a little better.

The bottom right was a reasonable graduated wash, though faint of pigment.

Bottom left is a variegation that I like.

The one in the middle on the bottom ... I'll get to that.

Since I was using a different weight and tooth of paper, I started with a dry sheet. The pigment and water pooled on it, and it was streaky instead of flat, so I dabbed at the lemon yellow and cobalt blue mix with a paper towel, and got a bit of texture that I liked.

Let me explain that I have not worked with watercolors in a long time, and while I'm enjoying ... a bit ... the learning experience, I don't foresee a future in watercolors for me. So for this online class, I bought the cheapest paints and brushes that I could find. And the paper I had on hand is barely better than junk. Actually the notecards are junky paper: there is no reason for them to perform well.

Annoyed with the results for the second day running, I decided to switch off the cheap brushes, and turn to a Chinese brush that I had been required to buy for a worthless (well, almost) watercolor class I took at Penn State as an elective.

The prof's name eludes me, if I ever took note of it. He spent one session talking about washes, and one about matting, and the rest he wasted nattering about his own paintings, which were the very worst kind of abstract shit that somehow gets sold for $$$ because the artist is a Professor. I remember not his name, but mostly his habit of flaring his nostrils and sneering at those less talented than himself.

The supplies we had to buy included two quite expensive Chinese brushes. (Expensive for us, in those days of limited income. Not so very, but still more than you'd want to pay for a brush nowadays.) The larger of the brushes, a three-inch natural soft bristle, I've used a lot over the years, for sweeping away eraser shavings on pen and ink and pencil drawings.

The small, as the limerick says, "Was of no use at all," until today.

The Chinese watercolor brush from 1975 was still healthy, and I wet it, and charged it with pigment.

Woo.

Suddenly the graduated wash was successful, even with the cheap paper. And the variegated one looked cool.

How I hate it when a sneering, self-aggrandizing prof from 35+ years in the past is right.

Finally, I pulled out a sample of watercolor paper that John had given me months ago; made in India, thick and soft.

Dry surface. I whipped up a purplish wash of EXTREMELY cheap kid's paints, and applied it to the paper with the Chinese brush. Flat wash, totally successful.

I'll let the pieces dry, and then put them under a stack of card stock to be ironed flat.

Day Two of Watercolor, OK dat.