Watercolor Escape Artists

Using a photo-manipulation program - in this case, Corel PhotoPaint - it's possible to have even more fun with colors and patterns you've dreamed up...all without touching your paintings. I used to like to make these designs then print them on high- or 100% cotton papers and either cover mini-books or do origami with them. Miss R. Fadler's "Finland Farm" turned into a repeating design (tiled). Miss M. Wolfe's "Free-For-All" Aussie beach, tiled. Miss G. Smith's "Tilting Barns" tiled. Miss K. Breeding's "Tibet Plain w/Yaks" tiled with selective colors altered. Miss K. Breeding's "Tibet Plain w/Yaks" tiled.

Miss S. Noel has another one of the most delicate renderings this time. Nicely done drawing as well. She could go in and add some shadows if she wanted, but I'm enjoying the coolness of this Canadian mountain scene. Miss G. Smith had perhaps the MOST challenging location of them all. I didn't tell her at the time that even I was a bit intimidated by the central falls and all the details in the vertical rock walls that form this chasm. (G: I know you struggled to get the borders 'clean' so I took the liberty of swiping them with my Photoshop 'eraser' for the web-pic.) Doesn't this look like a pastel-painting? I like it very much... Miss C. Lee chose to work on the smoother of our paper's sides. Can you recognize this landmark? It's only one of the most famous buildings in the entire world! What a nice way to wrap up the year. Well done, Missy. Miss R. Fadler has used two concepts to create depth in her painting of two pyramids: increasing the "mi...

In several cases I felt student-work slid downhill kind of like the nearest barn's doing in our picture this time (compare individual works from this week to previous posts)! I'll probably never know if it was because this view was considered too hard or the weather outside was just too nice to stay cooped up inside. I include my own version in order to point out the main 'teaching points' for this painting: to experiment with a crumpled-paper(towel) effect for the stormy/cloudy sky (I likened it to texturing a wall at home with paint-dipped natural sponges); to practice leaving 'white space' when a dark or rich color will need to be 'covered' with a lighter one...it would be near impossible even with our terrific opaque watercolors - see especially where the long 'palomino' yellow grass overlaps the red of the closest, tiltiest barn; to realize that sometimes nothing other than a strip/stripe of permanently unpainted white paper will suffice to ...