Watercolor Monday

Since I posted an abstract painting on Yupo over the weekend, I wanted to post a more traditional watermedia painting today to show just how versatile and fresh this surface can be.

One of my earliest forays into art was with pen and ink sketching with watercolor. Yupo works great for that application as you can see here. Here's an example of a quick (maybe 10-15 minutes) study I painted of peppers using a fine black Sharpie and watercolor. As I often do I started with a pure contour drawing before adding any color.

As I mentioned in my previous posting you can easily find Yupo in sheets (I prefer the heavier ones) or pads now online at Cheap Joes, Amazon, and Daniel Smith.

For more information about my watercolor classes, please write to me at ScarletOwl@hotmail.com or visit me on Teach Street. I look forward to hearing from you!

Yupo Saturday

First, what is Yupo? As some of you may know, it's a 100% recyclable "tree free" synthetic paper from the commercial printing industry. I first came across Yupo at a workshop almost 10 years ago. Because Yupo more like plastic, it's very durable and super smooth.

Today, with Yupo's growing popularity as an artist "paper" you can easily purchase Yupo online at places like Cheap Joes--who even sells Yupo in a pad.

I find Yupo's to be a versatile and adventurous painting surface that works well for both detailed representational work or loose abstracts as I've done here. In this particular painting, I used Golden liquid acrylics for really bold color saturation.

In researching Yupo art, I found this demo of painting sunflowers on Yupo as well as a great looking Yupo demo video from master watermedia artist George James.

I love introducing Yupo to my watermedia students, for more information please write to me at ScarletOwl@hotmail.com.

Today's Painting: Field of Dreams

Medium: Golden liquid acrylics on Yupo (a recycled Japanese paper orig. designed for printing applications)

About the work: Yupo is a fun and un-predicable surface for painting on. You can play with patterns, stamping, spraying etc. As you can see the colors stay bright and vibrant.

Price: $450

Awards: This painting was juried into a local show.