Friday, September 25, 2015

A class demo at Reddi Arts "Pine Island Revisited",  14"X 20" Watercolor on paper.

This piece was a bit different for me.  Normally I would start the sky wash, then while the paper is wet, work in the trees and reflections slowly.  In this one, I did the sky and water first, blew dry the paper (thoroughly), then drew on the tree design in pencil and masked the background negative space around the trees.  This process will cause the color to lift a bit (a lot) so you can put the sky color on richly.  In the upper right you can see I left the sky open (during the masking procedure) to add a bit of purple to the sky there.  The idea here is to work loosely inside the tree design to let the color intermix freely in a fractal way.  I added salt after the color was applied in trees and water reflections. 
It takes a long time for the salt to dry so take your time before removing salt from the surface so as not to spread color around the paper.  When I was certain everything was dry I removed the masking fluid to see what I had.   I had to add color that was lost in the sky as a glaze wash where needed.  Finally I added touch ups and tree details such as branches.  I like the sculptural feeling, the calligraphy the negative space masking creates.  I would say this was a successful piece! 

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