RRWS National Exhibit Bronze Medal

 

June has been full of nice surprises. The latest was the Bronze Medal at the RRWS National Exhibit in Moorhead, MN. I was not able to attend the opening ceremony last Tuesday, but did have a chance to see the show before it opened and the worker in charge of setting up the lights was kind enough to take this snapshot of me by my painting "No Left."

This piece retires from exhibits with a nice history. Initially, it was not successful and collected several rejections at shows, until I revised it by darkening the building and shadow on the right, and created a lead into the painting with the spatter on the foreground. After the adjustments, it was accepted into a local, a State and two national shows, and won an Honorable Mention and a Third Place Award.

It is a painting I love, not only because it shows one of my favorite places, San Francisco, but because its overall realism is undermined by the abstraction in the shadows and details, and I find the interplay of the two very intriguing.

Red River Watercolor Society Signature Membership

I am just back from a road trip with my family through the Dakotas, including a visit to Medora in the Badlands National Park and a paddling competition in the Sheyenne River.

I was also able to visit the excellent Red River Watercolor Society 2014 National Exhibit at the Hiemkomst Center in Moorhead, MN, just before it closed. This was a very significant exhibit for me: My painting Twin Elevators (26x20 watercolor on Yupo, shown above) was selected for the show by juror Michael Reardon and received the Jack Richeson Award. But more importantly, I am very proud to have achieved Signature Membership in the RRWS with my third acceptance into their National exhibit.

The RRWS is based in the Fargo/Moorhead area but has members from all over the country. They boast a high caliber of workshop instructors and exhibit jurors, and a great number of top level water media artists who participate in their annual shows.

Long Wait, Drive On

Long Wait, Drive On, watercolor on Yupo, 16x20

This is the finished painting that I started last month as a demo (see previous post). It resumes my experiments with Yupo and with urban scenes--I like the variety of perspectives and textures that this subject provides, and enjoy the challenge of portraying details on the slick surface of the synthetic paper.

The problem (or solution) is that Yupo makes it so easy to subtract pigment and repaint an area that it invites endless revision... I had started with a much simpler and more muted sky that I liked better, but the intensity of shadows and the brightness of the street color called for an intense blue sky, so I added more cobalt turquoise. It does look better in real life than on the photo.

I have several paintings and ideas in progress, I hope to start posting more often, as it is quite fun to share ideas and images.

Demo at Front Range Community College

Last week I had the pleasure to do a demo at the Front Range Community College in Longmont. My subject was an urban scene on yupo. Due to the longer drying time on yupo, I was not able to complete the painting during the class, but that was not the objective anyway. The goal was to share some of my experience and techniques for working on this new surface. During the one and a half hour session, I described both the thinking process and the many forms of paint application and removal--from the use of stamps and templates to watercolor sticks and sponges. The students participated with their comments and questions, and it was a very enjoyable time overall. The image shows the painting in progress.

The Greens of Summers Past

The Greens of Summers Past, watercolor on Yupo, 20x26

Nowadays, Summer arrives with the sound of children on vacation playing in the neighborhood... Thinking back of younger years my summers were also filled with the sounds of friends playing in the back yard or on the streets, but also the loud noise of cicadas, the warm, humid air of southern Brazil and the intense, unforgiving green of the landscape. It was in this nostalgic, peaceful mood that I painted my latest creation on Yupo synthetic paper, of a scene in a park near my sister's home in Castro, Brazil. It was based on a study I did on my sketchbook. Simpler days that can still inspire...

This painting was done with only four colors, and only one green. I took advantage of the variations allowed by the color green apatite genuine from Daniel Smith to create a range of greens. When applied very densely, this color is very dark. I layered a thick coat all over the colored areas, and later painted back into some sections with clear water, diluting the pigment to lighter, warmer greens to create the main tree and other features. The sky and the house and the highlights in the water reflections were all lifted back to white, in a negative shaping process akin to carving. I'm including below a detail, to show some of the textural effects of the color on Yupo, some intentional, some less controlled.

Demonstration This Saturday!

This Saturday, October 2nd, I and other artists represented in the Rocky Mountain National Exhibit will be doing demonstrations of our techniques, from 11am to 2pm, at the Foothills Art Center in Golden.

I plan to do a complete painting on Yupo, of another urban scene, in a style similar to the piece in the exhibit, to give people a good sense of the methods and materials used, the thinking process, etc.

This will be an informal event, the public is encouraged to ask questions and participate. The artists will be in front of their exhibit paintings, doing the demos at the same time, giving the public the opportunity to choose whom to watch. It will be a fun experience, and it is totally free. By the way, admission is free all day to the exhibition as well.

Silos in Blue, a Landscape in Three Acts

Silos in Blue, watercolor on Yupo synthetic paper, 13x20 (detail)

[Note: I've edited my post on 8/20 to include the detail above, in order to allow viewers to see some of the texture and brushwork.]

First Act: "Silos in Blue" is my third attempt at painting this scene. I had often seen this farm with two large silos, in the distance, as I drove home from work in Boulder. I liked the color of the silos against the pale yellow grasses that surrounded it in the fall. So when winter was over, I hiked to a point from which I could view and sketch the scene.
Only now the scene was quite different, the grass was greener, I could no longer see the hills in the background from that position, and instead of long shadows, I had the sun high in the sky. So I did a small study on site, but added a lot of the elements I was missing, such as the color and shadows, from imagination. The result was "Blue Silos," watercolor on Arches CP paper, 6x10 inches (left).

Second Act: Some months later, I decided to do a larger studio version on a half sheet of yupo synthetic paper. I moved the slightly silos off center, and tried to create a cruciform composition by introducing two fence posts in the foreground. This second version is shown here on the left, "Silos in Blue," watercolor on Yupo, 13x20 inches.

Third Act: Early viewers kept giving me the feedback that the poles were too distracting, that the complexity of the middle ground called for a simpler foreground treatment.
I finally took the advice and changed the foreground, taking advantage of the ease of lifting or wiping off entire sections on yupo.

This is the third version of this painting, but is it THE END? ...or is this play open to a sequel? Only time will tell.

Late Summer Days: Landscape on Yupo

Late Summer Days, watercolor on yupo synthetic paper, 20x26 inches

This is another piece on yupo, the second one I did. It started with a technique learned from Mark Mehaffey: I applied Winsor red, cadmium yellow and cerulean blue almost straight off the tube, diluted with very little water, and allowed the colors to merge and move on the surface of the yupo. After letting the mixture dry overnight, I chose a scene to "carve out" of that background by lifting pigment back to white, and layering other colors.

The green color was lifted partially to reveal the sky and negatively shape the tree masses. The white barn was lifted completely to white, with a brush wet with clear water. The silo was given a rough texture by applying multiple layers of color. Watercolor pencils were used to add random lines for texture and variety.

The detail below gives a better view of the main shapes and the techniques used and textures achieved. You can click on the image to view and even larger version.

Late Summer Days, detail

It was very exciting to work with the loose characteristic of yupo and still try to impose some measure of control in the creation of shapes and details!

An Urban Scene on Yupo Synthetic Paper

Parallel Lives

Watercolor on Yupo, 26x20 inches

“Parallel Lives” has been selected for the 2009 New Trends Show of the Colorado Watercolor Society. This was only my 3rd painting on Yupo synthetic paper. Yupo is actually made out of plastic, and was developed originally for the advertising industry. I was introduced to this new material earlier this year, by instructor Mark Mehaffey, and have become a fan of the way it allows for interesting texture work, and keeps colors very strong and vibrant.

Some watercolorists are reluctant to use Yupo, or believe you cannot do very controlled, detailed work on this slick surface. Well, no one told me that… I went in and started painting with the same combination of controlled and loose areas as usual.

I’ve chosen synthetic paper for this street scene of San Francisco, as I wanted a more abstract treatment to emphasize the symbolic meaning of the lives running in parallel on the cable car lines. Lives seem to converge and merge, but never actually do, we all follow our individual paths…

Parallel Lives (detail)

In a future post, I will discuss the techniques for working with watercolor on Yupo.