Walking Trail

 

Hiltcher Trail

Watercolor on Yupo

It was supposed to rain today but I gave it a chance and even thought the clouds dance with the sun creating these wonderful shadows and bright spots of sun I was able to walk, paint and get home before the clouds opened.

Painting with YUPO

On January 30th I took ‘The Painting on Yupo’ class from Kevin Davidson. I have painted on this plastic paper for a while now and have developed my own way of achieving the goal of getting the subject to look acceptable. It is always difficult to change habits but one just has to try. Kevin's paintings are fresh with brilliant clean color and I enjoyed seeing him paint with this unusual medium. 

Here is the Yupo class study with Kevin Davidson.  Visit his site for a wonderful visual experience.

YUPO & WATERCOLOR

Just love to playing with a piece of Yupo and my new brush.

Fruit

I pulled out a piece of Yupo last night and this is what happened.  I love working with it. I have been using Yupo for a few years and love the way it takes watercolor pigment and stays unaffected by multiple applications of color. I use it mostly for my ocean scenes, you can see one here. I have to paint flat because until the paint dries it will move. I have had paintings run off the paper while carrying them back to the car. Also while camping at the Grand Canyon during a rainy night my painting became damp again and stuck to other papers. What I like about it is that you can continue to add color without the paper being affected by scrubbing or reworking and the paint continues to stay fresh and transparent. I love that the paint does its own thing and find it very entertaining to continue to work like sculpting till I find a visual result I like.

Dana Point

The clouds have been slow to pull away from the coast in the morning. It has made it a little cooler in the past few days but today and for the rest of the week the heat will increase. The painting is on Yupo. It was windy and there is sand on the painting surface.

I will be spending a few days at the beach till I get a painting that works. I find that I have to be in front of a subject to paint it. The water and wave movement is still a chanllenge to me. I think I will plan a day of drawing. When I draw I slow down and see better. I look, draw, then look what I have drawn comparing it with what I see, then look and draw more. The more time I look and draw, the more I see.

Dana Point, California

It is so relaxing to sit and paint while feeling the wind, hearing the waves and the laughter of children playing in the water, the fog horn and the smell of ocean all this while I am trying to get the waves right.

When pelicans fly over their shadows follow them along the sand and over the rocks.

Dana Point, California USA

These were from a few days ago when I went to Dana Point, California to paint. It is one of my favorite beaches. It’s not a swimming beach, the beach slopes fast dropping very deep just past where the waves break. It seems like the waves break right in front of you, almost like they will break over your head but then just stop when the wave hits the sand and pulls back into the deep water. It’s magnificent, dynamic and full of so much energy that when I first sit down after all the schlepping of painting gear and prep I just have to sit for a while and breathe in the show.

Watercolor on Yupo


Watercolor on Yupo

Graphite on paper

Watercolor on Yupo

Watercolor on Arches