Taking a Watercolor theme to acrylic.
Demo : Color over Water" 18" X 36"  Acrylic on canvas 

In my Fleet Landing acrylic class I was trying to help the class tap into their inner poet, going with the flow, while exploring painting technique at the same time. In my example I was also showing how to do the roses using a saran wrap technique to create texture.  The green part was using a watercolor wash technique while the right side I added heavier paint to create texture as a base for transparent washes.  Editing with opaque compliments did the rest, trying to keep the color strong and saturated. I like the colors to be fresh bright and luminous. It was based on the watercolor below.

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! 

I love watching my kids in oil painting class work .  This one in particular is very talented.  I like the way she just goes at it directly and with out too much timidity.  She doubts herself from time to time, but in a healthy self analyzing corrective way.  Here she is at 8 working on her cat painting.

A Tale of Two Paintings, wet into wet and glaze over dry masked design!
It's been awhile since I have posted on this blog.  I had gotten distracted by the winds of a changing economic downturn and my many new responsibilities.  This particular post is still related to classes that I teach but soon I will start introducing other material on fine art in general and concepts I am exploring to date.
This image below, is one I did in a class recently for watercolor.  I particularly liked the poetic quality it has.  I was trying to demonstrate two different ways to produce this soft image, one using wet into wet watercolor technique (left) and the other using masking fluid first for the tree shapes then glazing wet into wet washes right over that (after the initial color had dried of course, a bit different approach)!