Mixing Mediums and Trying Out a New Palette

Fall and foul weather has finally arrived in Michigan. My good mood has gone south with the geese so I've been experimenting instead of starting a new project. I haven't worked with watercolor on gesso coated paper in ages so that was on my to-do list. I did wind up adding a little acrylic but very little and then I used soft pastel to the mix with some interesting results.

This painting is pure acrylic.

I also did a quick landscape, totally from imagination using a color palette which I found online. The Fall colors are uninspiring this year so I had to pull from other sources.

Milkweed ~ watercolor on gesso

SOLD

One more, this time the ubiquitous milkweed pods going to seed. It's a perfect subject for this type of surface because lifting is so incredibly easy. I created the fluff with nothing more than a 1/4" stiff bristle brush.

Watercolor on Gesso

Another small work, this time on acrylic gesso coated 90# Fabriano watercolor paper. I really love working with transparent watercolor on gesso. The paints reacts very different on this surface and if I add texture to the gesso while it's still moist, it creates the opportunity for some interesting effects later on. This is a fantasy floral, no reference used. I find, while texturing the gesso, if I don't have any plan in mind beforehand and simply allow the resulting texture to guide me, I can get more spontaneous results.

Lily-of-the-Valley Commission~watercolor on gesso

I've finally completed this commission and will send it on to it's new home soon. I spent most of my time battling the effects of humidity. I've found nothing behaves normally when the dewpoint is way up. The gesso fought me because it refused to get to the 'sticky' stage where all the neat textures appear and my paper buckled repeatedly. Nothing that couldn't be dealt with, tho. My customer is happy and that's what counts.

Lily-of-the-Valley~Revisited 1

I had planned to redo my painting, Lily-of-the-Valley and as luck would have it someone contacted me recently to do another version as a commission so I've been playing around with the theme. This is not the final but I liked the antique look well enough to post it. It reminds me of an old botanical. This is also on gessoed paper.

Berries & Birch~ Round 2 Completed!

I've included a few closeups to showcase the texture. You should be able to see where I added some white colored pencil to highlight the ridges. Love the icy feel the pencil lends.

This is the completed painting. I managed to tweak the original image so it looks closer to the real thing.

I've finished the tree trunks and the background and I'm ready to remove the mask so I can paint the berries.

It's done(!)although now that I see it on screen a few places need a little cleanup. I had lots of fun working with the tissue paper/gesso texture. I think I came as close as possible to matching the results I got in Elements using the watercolor filter. I didn't go quite as dark for fear of it looking dreary. For my palette I used Payne's Gray, indanthrene blue, neutral tint and a little burnt sienna on the bark and DS Pyrrol red, perm. yellow and more burnt sienna for the berries. To bring out the texture I used various colored pencils lightly rubbed across the ridges in certain areas which gave me yet another idea.

I've been admiring Sandy Maudlin's watercolor batiks on rice paper and wondered if it might be possible to create a reverse batik technique, if you will, using the tissue paper/gesso texture. Instead of applying ink into cracks in hardened wax, why not highlight the ridges in the gesso with a dark color producing roughly the same effect? I may have to explore this further.