The charity that will benefit from this year’s show is Home Start (Moss, Norway location). I did some reading about the organization and it has a really great mission. As a single mother, I am so thankful for the support I get from my family and I don’t know what I would do without it. An organization like this is great for families who may not be so lucky as I am.
I will post the finished piece later this week when I finish it up. It should be in the mail to Norway by the weekend…
I started a painting of some rocks by the shoreline from a photo I took in Ogunquit, Maine. I have never done a painting like this before, of rocks partially covered with water. My plan is to finish up the rocks and then go in with the water at the end. It is an experiment.
I had an issue with my watercolor block because the glue came off and the I had to tape my paper down to a board (after I had already started the painting). I am disappointed because this is Arches and I have never had this happen with a premium brand. I sprayed the back of the paper with water and it stayed pretty well for the most part, but the paper does have more warping than normal.
I have spent quite a bit of time working on this picture over the course of the past few weeks. I was intending to post in progress photos as I went along but then things started to go awry and I decided to wait until the end to see how things turned out! At the bottom of this post, I wrote about my process.
First I looked up general leaf shapes and sketched similar shapes on watercolor paper. I made up the pen and ink parts myself. I painted the leaves first, thinking that I could paint the background around them, but then realized that it wouldn’t work so I would have to use masking fluid.
In retrospect, I should have just gone right in with the masking fluid from the beginning because when I removed it, the color was lifted. Additionally, I must have left some gaps because the blue seeped through in parts. I had to repaint the leaves and also try to camouflage the blue. Luckily, I already had incorporated holes into the design of some of the leaves which made it easier in some places.
Regardless of all the mishaps I like the finished painting. I have never painted such a dark and intense background before. Also, it was kind of refreshing to paint from my imagination without copying so directly from photos. This was also my first time using masking fluid for anything significant. It is definitely something I would be willing to try again. The background didn’t come out as dark as in reality in my scan and I tried to darken it, but now the browns are a bit darker than they are in the picture. In real life, it “pops” a lot more.