The boys and I went to a local Mexican restaurant on a weekday and saw this view towards the gas station. The sky was more gloomy than my rendition. However, the road was more calm than my hot rendition. I had to play up the drama so I could capture the 7eleven sign and the drama of shapes in its vicinity.
The yellow first wash had to be strong. This I learned from my first attempt because the lighter yellow that I painted first dried lighter and weaker. On this attempt (second attempt), I maintained the strengths of the colors and freshness in the sky but by the time I came down the sheet, my stamina was spent and I lost the whites that I had marked off in the digital sketch by not being careful in my brushwork. Scroll down to see the digital comparison. The 7 Eleven sign is directwatercolor and a saved light, but the shine on the street is gouache touches that I inserted to recover the spark.
The paper I was trying to work on is completely new to me. It’s Canson Heritage paper that I want to be able to use for extremely large watercolor paintings. I read that the paper allows to work wet in wet long. This, I found to be true. However, longer the paper lets us play, the less sizing it has. Owing to that, the paper buckles far more when it was held down by a puny tape. This was an issue for subsequent was drying as there were huge valleys and craters that led to moving pigment into the valleys which couldn’t be evened out even with a blowdryer. My next experiment involved stapling it down after wetting it once. It stretched nicely but I have not painted on a stretched and stapled paper yet. Those experiments will happen tomorrow.
