Fun with Yupo

 Here’s a Yupo watercolor of one of my favorite places. I didn’t draw anything and barely put in any structure. I just let the brushes and paint do their thing. After that dried I took out some color to better define some shapes. I could keep going but I kind of like where it’s at. 

I was wrong. Sometimes we see things in a photo that we don’t see in real life. Saw some things that should be better and made them better. Can you tell?

I worked a little on this plein aire sketch I did of a street in New Orleans. A little crooked. 

Gouache darn it….

 Well, I’m supposed to be packing but instead I spent the morning on this weird piece, mainly painting over the watercolor with gouache. The paper is worn to bits in the cloud area, as I kept putting down color and wiping it out. I kind of like the density of the gouache; it gives it a more foreboding feeling, like, what just happened: nature or apocalypse? And I did learn that you can’t reconstitute gouache on the palette like you can watercolor, so only put out what you can use….

Elaine O. — August 6, 2022

I'm really feeling these lazy days of summer, so I thought I'd try painting "quieter" to match the summer vibe. I'm going for a quiet, meditative feel with pale, minimal color and soft blends. I've seen similar paintings (mostly florals) and wanted to try to get the technique down in my sketchbook....

...before I tried to do a larger painting. This one is after an illustration in a book by Julie Collins. She is a master of this!

After Julie Collins    12" x 9"

On the one hand, I'm having fun and really getting into a zone just watching the paint move. On the other hand, I can't seem to resist going darker and higher-contrast. Maybe I'm just not a "quiet" painter. Or maybe I need more practice!

elaine t. / more Alaska vibes

 A salmon that just escaped the bears at the waterfall! I thought about adding a big open bear mouth in the background, but that felt too corny. He'll get more shading and scales today. More work to do on the rushing water this week.

Cezanne has inspired me to be looser

 Finished the Andersonville street scene. 

I decided to make the man in the foreground more interesting and forget about all the work in the background that I was not really interested in anyway  

Then I took a bad Yupo painting, washed the paint off leaving a faint image of the original, and painted a new version of it over the old one.

Moving Along…

 I did a little work on the still life, removing some of the intense blue from the vase. I really like this now. I just realized I cut off some of the blue flowers at the top in my cropping attempts, but you get the idea…

I’ve done a little work on the gas station apocalypse sunset, but it’s far from finished. Trying not to rush through the process too much. Stopping to think about it, letting the paint dry, then I wander out of the room and forget I’m painting….

I probably won’t post next week because I’m wandering all the way to Michigan for the week with the family. 

Maybe I am on the right track.

 Pretty abstract, but I do have a subject.  Getting a lot of transaction with the gum arabic as far as moving paint around, putting it down wet, blotting it, then putting down more paint and blotting it etc.

Elaine O. — July 30, 2022

One more vacation memory recorded...one more sheet of panoramic paper used. I really loved the Courtyard of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. This captures my sense of the cool, quiet corners in the tall, light filled atrium, as well as the lovely architecture and plantings.

18" x 6"

Stumps

 I like painting watercolor on gessoed canvas. I’ve made several attempts with this tree stump around the corner from my house. I like this one but I missed the roughness of the sections  

I liked this one on 140# paper. I might spend some time deconstructing this. 

That was fun. 

I tried fixing a painting I did of Greeta at Beloit College. 

That was before and this is after. 

The Fish and the Lady

 Well, I did a little work on both of these At home. I reworked the background color and darkened the coat on the lady. I like it. I might do a bigger version of this, not sure. The proportions on this are way off- I feel she’s way too big and so is the background…

I toned down the background on the fish and tried to give him a little more presence, I think it works but I won’t be spending any more time on him…