Well, I am preparing for a big weekend. My second grandson gets married on Saturday evening. This is a special event because he is in the Army Infantry and May 8th he leaves for Germany and then will be deployed to Afghanistan in August. We are having lunch with him today. I know next week he will not want to spend time with “Grandma Honey Bunny” so I am grabbing time with him whenever I can get it!
The ATC’s continue to be a source of joy. One of the WordPress bloggers completed her first abstract recently and it contained the universal symbol for “fish”. I wanted to do an ATC by coloring with my watercolor crayons. A different approach than the one I have been using. I started thinking about cave art and wondering if I had ever seen a fish as an element in a cave painting. This little painting is the result of that cogitation.
I began by coloring on an underpainting with almost all of the colors in my set. I then continued to apply layers of color. In between each layer I would paint the layer with clear water. This paper is heavily sized so I just pushed the paint around. It did not really absorb. When I got the background the way I wanted, I drew the fish and colored it in. By then the color was so thick and had been worked enough that it was creamy and I just colored in the body without applying much water.
Learnings: 1. When working with rough paper the color settles in the low spots and is very hard to dissolve. 2. I purchased a set of of “wet” brushes as part of my last order from Cheap Joe’s so I tried out a medium size brush. I filled the shaft with clear water and used the brush to make this painting. It worked very well. The crayons with a wet brush would be very convenient for travel and plein air. Not much to carry or clean up.