2013 Waterloo Watercolor Exhibition in Austin

Texas Redbud                             Palmetto Sky
12" x 12"                                       19" x 26"    

Both of my paintings were accepted into the spring show! I am delighted and honored beyond words! The show will be opened with a reception on Sunday, April 28th from 2-4 pm. The show is at 700 Lavaca, Lower Level. The building will be open on weekdays from 9-5 and the show will run until June 9, 2013.
 Please plan to come to the opening reception or stop by to view the spring exhibit.

2013 Waterloo Watercolor Group Spring Exhibition

 

Tomorrow I am taking Texas Redbud and Palmetto Sky to the jury for the Spring 2013 Waterloo Watercolor Group Exhibition. Palmetto Sky is painted on Yupo, synthetic paper, and Texas Redbud is on Arches paper.  Frank Eber, watercolor artist, will be doing a demo on Sunday afternoon then a 4 day workshop this coming week for Waterloo and will be on the jury for the paintings to be selected for the Spring Exhibit. 
I am really looking forward to Frank Eber's demo and I am sorry not to be able to attend his workshop as well. He paints loose and  atmospheric watercolors.

Watercolor Study with Limited Palette

 

Here are two studies on Arches paper using a limited palette of Ultramarine Blue, Quinacridone Gold and Quinacridone Burnt Orange. Both make use of glazes and mixing the color on the paper through glazes rather than mixing color on the palette. The painting on the left uses a softer color palette with more emphasis on shadows and the painting on the right uses more contrast, brighter colors. Interesting to see such big differences with the same 3 colors used. I am trying to be more patient with putting time and effort into doing these studies as I always learn so much from them but I am impatient with working on studies that never seem like "finished" art.

Texas Red Bud

 

We have a gorgeous red bud tree at our house and it is bursting with beautiful  blooms and buzzing with bees. A red bud tree is interesting in form in that the blooms seem very randomly attached to the branches and the ends of the branch stick out beyond the clusters of blossoms. The clusters also don't have a uniform number of flowers in each cluster. The soft colors and branches seem very oriental in form.

Seahorse in the Deep Deep Sea

 

This bright little seahorse is in watercolor with salt on the background for texture, watercolor pencils and pen & ink on the body. I did this little exercise with Deb Richardson at   
Jerry's Artarama last night.
Salt is a great technique for showing texture, motion, foam,  snow in various ways. It certainly captures a nice fluidness for water.

Palmetto Sky...finished!

 

Here is the Palmetto Sky watercolor  on yupo paper,  finished!
I made the sky a bit more intense highlighted branches, tried to get the feel of being under a palmetto umbrella.

Palmetto Sky

 

Watercolor on yupo paper...yupo is a non-absorbent, synthetic paper that is similar to painting on hot press paper- like painting on a piece of plastic. The paint rolls up and moves around and you can't do much with washes as a wet coat of paint moves the dry coat of paint under it around on the paper. It does give interesting effects though. This is from a photograph looking up a tree with the beautiful sky peeking through ...looking like a natural umbrella.
I have not quite completed painting yet, still need to work on the sky and making the fronds seem "attached" to the branches better in some spots.

Apache Pass, north of Rockdale on the North San Gabriel River

 

This is an historic area where the Apaches lived in Texas on the North San Gabriel River and used this river crossing. The large flat rock was a very interesting feature in the super reflective water which was very clear although the river was low.
I was more pleased with this effort than the other two. Again mounted wallis paper and Sennelier & Rembrandt pastels with a watercolor underpainting. The difficulty that I encountered in my paintings is that I did the underpaintings in the morning light then came back and started on the pastel work in the early afternoon and the light had changed making it very difficult to paint on location - so, lesson learned there. 
And plein air painting is a challenge for me - about 40* and very windy in the morning then about 73*, still windy and buggy in the afternoon. Not terribly pleasant painting to me but others in our group just loved it!

The Good, the Bad and.....the Ugly

 

Ok, remember I promised to put in the good, the bad and the ugly and here it is. This is also from the Rockdale Pastel Workshop. The watercolor underpainting started out ok, but not dark and rich enough,  there was really nice distant light on the green rise at the rear but  I just couldn't do anything with all the weedy grasses that I saw. It just didn't work. 
So the great thing about wallis paper is that I can just wash this mess off and will have a light underpainting image left on the paper and use it again.

2013 Pastel Workshop in Rockdale with Rita Kirkman

 

Here is Mama Agata's Terrace in Ravelo, Italy again...in pastel this time. I still have more pastel work to do on this painting. 
In Rita Kirkman's workshop, we did underpaintings with watercolor then used pastel over that base. I need to get darker with my underpaintings then add details in pastel and let more of the watercolor underpainting show through. This was a little difficult  for me, pastels work so much differently than watercolor. And Rita's preferred technique is not in as smooth a base as I usually work - she does very little pastel smoothing but applies blips of color with lots of texture.
This painting was done on mounted wallis paper with Sennelier and Rembrandt pastels.
I do like my tree!