Demo at the Colorado Watercolor Society, part 2

This is a detail of the finished stage of the painting I started in my demo at the CWS general meeting last week, as reported in my last post.

The detail shows the variety of the color, texture and brushwork that went into the piece. Some shapes have been refined, added, lifted, taking advantage of the characteristics of the Aquabord support, whereas other shapes remain as first placed during the demo.

Below is the image of the complete painting:
A Morning in Inistioge, Ireland. Watercolor on Aquabord, 16x20.

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.

Sometimes Good Things Come in Pairs!

Supposedly, misery loves company, but sometimes good things also come in pairs. Even though I find guinea fowl curious creatures and decided to do this sketch of two of them, that is not really what I am talking about...

I just got good news of acceptance into two upcoming exhibits: The Rockies West 18th Annual National Exhibition, juried by Paul Jackson, and the Colorado Watercolor Society 20th State Watercolor Exhibition, juried by Soon Warren.

This is a good start towards my goal of exhibiting more often and more widely in 2011. Last year I was very busy being a new father and limited myself to only a few events. I will be posting more information about these two shows, which happen in March.

And since I did mention the guinea fowl, this is another page of my sketch book... I observed them at a farm during my trip to Brazil, and thought this would be a good subject for a "lineless" sketch, in which I try to paint directly, without pencil lines or any drawing, by observing and reproducing with the brush the shapes I see. This is a fun exercise to do and it helps loosen up from the rigidity of lines.

Happy New Year!

Happy 2011! I believe this will be a busy, eventful year for myself, and I wish you a lot of health, happiness and success as well.

I'm just back from a trip to spend Christmas with my family in Brazil. It was great to see everyone and they were particularly thrilled to spend time with our 14-month-old son. The image above is a study of my nephew Alexandre, based on a photo I took while he watched a movie. He is such a handsome boy, so full of character, I look forward to painting a full size portrait of him. This sketch is 6x9, painted with a size 12 synthetic round, with cadmium yellow, cadmium scarlet, burnt sienna, cobalt turquoise, sepia and light ochre.

Cloudy Irish Day

The images and stories of my visits to Ireland in March and May will continue to find their way into my sketchbook and my blog. This time around, I decided to practice by doing a sketch of a street in Inistioge, a beautiful, scenic village where I stopped for lunch on my way to Kilkenny. I was sitting outdoors at a cafe, and this was the view uphill from us. Only occasionally would the sun break free of the clouds in that afternoon in March. My goal here was to capture the atmosphere and the light conditions, using some muted yet interesting colors. It was a fun sketch and brings back good memories.

Boulder Creek Sketch

My latest outdoor work was this sketch of Boulder Creek, with the morning sun shining through the canopy of trees and warm up the water and some of the rocks. With the colder weather and shorter days and a busy schedule the opportunities to paint outdoors have not been that many.

This was done with watercolor sticks and watercolor pencils, and a size 10 synthetic travel brush.

Article on Daniel Smiths Watercolor Sticks

I wrote a short article for the November issue of the Collage, the Colorado Watercolor Society newsletter, describing my recent experiences painting with Daniel Smith Extra Fine Watercolor Sticks (available from www.DanielSmith.com).

My last post already featured one of the sketches I made solely with sticks. They are an interesting new tool, I have only begun to incorporate them in my work. I really enjoyed the quality of the pigment and how well it dilutes for painting.

The sticks are also very versatile for use. The image above is a detail of a study done on hot press watercolor paper using a variety of techniques: Drawing with the sticks onto dry paper, diluting the stick marks in other areas, painting with diluted stick pigment, drawing with wet watercolor sticks, applying the sticks to wet paper, and shaving dust of the sticks onto wet paper.

In a future post, I will include more information and images of work with watercolor sticks. The link to the Colorado Watercolor Society and to the article are available on the side bar.