Demo at the Colorado Watercolor Society

This week I had the honor to be one of several artists invited to perform a live demo at the Colorado Watercolor Society, as part of the program for the February general meeting. There was great attendance and the responses were very positive.

I did my demo of a painting sketch on Aquabord, for the benefit of those who were unfamiliar with this support. My subject was the same street scene in Inistioge, Ireland, which I had portrayed in my sketchbook and posted on this blog before.

During the allowed time of one hour, I did my best to answer questions and narrate the thinking process behind the painting, while battling very dry conditions from the air-conditioning and paint runs on a near vertical board. I worked with my usual squirrel mops, sizes 6 and 8, and synthetic rounds, sizes 12 and 16, and used a limited palette of ultramarine finest, perylene maroon, quinacridone burnt orange and cobalt turquoise, with some touches of sepia, cadmium scarlet and neutral tint.

Despite the furious pace and loose approach, I did not complete the painting, but there was enough opportunity to discuss and show the characteristics of the materials, demonstrate some techniques and offer a glimpse at what the normal process would have been like. Below is an image of the study at the point where the demo ended, I will work on it further and later post the completed painting.