Watercolor Escape Artists

This project was different in two ways. It was our first experience with canvas. Yes, Virginia, there IS canvas for watercolors (we used Fredrix brand - sheets of gessoed material torn from a 9x12 pad)! HINT: read the manufacturer's flyer that comes with...all the way to the last sentence, because that's where you'll find out the unmounted-stuff warps/buckles LIKE CRAZY unless "secured" to a non-buckling surface... The other difference was in the capturing of images for the blog: scanning picked up a 'moire' pattern from the fabric weave, so tripod-photography was needed. I hope you'll see the possibilities of this challenging surface, even though you'll quickly notice several students were unable to complete their pictures. (p.s. I'm having trouble with the blog's 'add picture' function, so will add Miss Noel's work later.) Miss R. Fadler Inadvertaintly the 'covering power' of our opaque watercolors is illustrated in...

Miss S. Noel Miss R. Fadler Miss M. Wolfe Miss M. Craycraft Miss K. Breeding Miss G. Smith Master D. Harwell (he missed one of our classes) Miss C. Lee Miss Am. Cole Miss Alx. Cole Miss A. Escue Master J. Wolters (he was not feeling well our first week on this project, so was unable to complete it)

It's so great to be back for our Spring 2010 semester. We "lost" some but have gained some...three new students (not to mention the three new continents we'll be going on assignment to). NOTE: students' names are below their paintings. This first illustration ("Many Boats") is a scene of a busy harbor in Vietnam and contained a couple of challenges for all of the students. 1) First is the opportunity to try rough-press watercolor paper; a surface that a certain long-time watercolorist had never even worked on previously. It proved a little difficult to transfer our drawings onto, so once I found the window-as-light-table made that a whole lot easier several students were able to finish up their preparations with less frustration (directly tracing on the rough stuff in ink, instead of pencil transfer and overdrawing in ink). 2) The second challenge was to leave all those white (rope) lines. This turned the background seawater into a varigated blue jigsaw ...