This week at Brush-Paper-Water...

Agave
watercolor, 19" x 14"
Deb Ward

Although we live more than two thousand miles apart and have never met, I count Deb Ward as a dear friend thanks to the bond we've established after meeting in the blogosphere. Over the past two years, I've enjoyed reading her often humorous blog entries and watching her develop paintings. Deb moves easily between transparent and opaque watermedia, trying new techniques fearlessly as she explores a wide range of subjects, and I've regularly ooh'd and ahh'd over her finished works.

Jump to Brush-Paper-Water to see more of Deb's work and then follow the link to her blog.

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Masking techniques tutorial - part 3...

I'm back at last with another installment of my tutorial on masking techniques. Today I'm going to give you information about using frisket film and Con-tact paper, as well as a novel way to use masking fluid, and I also have some additional information on tapes. One of my happy discoveries -- the Nichiban tape shown above -- is explained in more detail later in this post.

I covered the common uses of masking fluid back in January -- you can see the posts here, here, and here. I also looked at various types of masking tapes in another post later in the month.

Guy Magallanes prefers frisket film (a sheet of low-adhesive transparent film) for masking larger areas. He explains his approach in this post. Connie Williams recommends using low-tack, clear Con-tact shelf paper in place of frisket film. It's inexpensive and the light adhesive won't mar your paper. She's written a wonderful tutorial here. I tried frisket film for the first time and, as you can see here, had a problem with a paint leak because I didn't get the edge of the film completely sealed.

Deb Ward uses a technique developed by Steve Blackburn for pouring masking fluid as a design element. Her posts showing this technique are here, here, here, and here.

Tape is one of the tools in Sandy Maudlin's painting kit. She creates some amazing textures and scenes using Manco masking tape. Sandy generously shares many of her paintings here. Unfortunately I haven't had any luck finding Manco tape in California and my online searches haven't been successful either.

Back in January, I discovered that my favorite tape for masking the edges of my paintings was actually the worst performer of all the tapes I tested (see the blog link in the second paragraph). But visually I prefer the white tape over the better performing blue masking tapes.

Fortunately, William Hook mentioned during a discussion online that he found Nichiban tape to be absolutely superior as a masking tape. I found it at New York Central Art Supply.* Although it's a bit more expensive than generic masking tapes, it does work incredibly well. For the sake of testing, I bought one roll each of four different widths, but I think I will probably make most use of the 1/2" width. I can protect the edge of the painting with that narrow strip and then make the border wider with my old white tape. The wider Nichiban tapes may come in handy for masking shapes within paintings.

As you can see in this image, the Nichiban tape protected the right side edge of this painting completely, while my old white tape -- 3M 256 -- allowed paint to leak under the bottom edge. (The paper had been soaked for approximately 5 minutes prior to stretching, but was completely dry when I applied the tape.)

*(A brief note on NY Central Art Supply -- you download a PDF of their catalog and then call them with your order. I found them very pleasant over the phone and they shipped promptly. They also called to let me know that one of my items was backordered -- a level of service that has disappeared in most cases these days. I recommend them highly.)

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Thank yous (current and belated)...

About a week ago, Deb Ward announced that I'd won her Holiday Giveaway, but she kept us all in suspense about my gift. Late on the afternoon of the 31st, Señor Terremoto thought to check our post office box and there was my mystery package from Deb!! I'm pleased to say that I received a set of notecards featuring six of Deb's beautiful paintings, including one of my all-time faves, the peony that graces Deb's blog banner (go check it out!!). Thank you, Deb!!

The second thank you is also to Deb, for bestowing a Kreativ Blogger award on me last October. I got so woefully behind in my blog reading while I was back in Wisconsin for my dad's memorial service that I gave up on trying to catch up and just started in where I was in late October. But that meant I completely missed Deb's award. So a very belated thank you, Deb, for your vote of support!!

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Paintings, Passions, and Presents...

Delicious Apples, watercolor, 7" x 14"

This is an older painting that took a while to come together. I'm posting it to share how I developed it. When I painted this, I was a member of a group that worked from a new still-life every week and I often painted an aerial view of the setups. I used a Polaroid camera so I could record the setup for later reference and also start work from it immediately. The images were pretty crummy, but I liked that because it forced me to improvise. I'd cut a rudimentary mask for the image and mark it with grid marks to aid in transferring a drawing to my watercolor paper. Here's the working image, just a little over 2 inches wide in real life.

In this case, I wasn't thrilled with the cutting board nor with the straight piece of striped fabric, so I concentrated on painting the pitcher and vegetables. I worked on them on and off for months, all the while wondering what I could do with the background. Then one day when the painting was sitting on an easel in another workshop, the instructor took one look at it, pulled up a chair underneath the easel, sat down facing us and mimed juggling the fruits and veggies that appeared above his head. His impulsive act triggered my idea to create an ambiguous background -- so the objects might seem to be on a table or perhaps tumbling through the air.

I love the visual excitement of striped fabrics, so I pulled a piece out of my stash, arranged it with the still-life in mind, and took a Polaroid shot from approximately the same distance as I had the original still-life. Then I carefully sketched it in behind the completed objects on my painting and began the task of making it appear "real." Along the way, I added several items to the still-life as needed for the composition. The end result was exactly what I had hoped for.

Blog Award:


I am honored to receive this blog award for the second time in a couple of weeks, this time bestowed by Deb Ward. Deb is part of the group centered around Cincinnati, and from what I can tell, that seems to be an area brimming with talented people who are all passionate about painting!! In addition to working in watercolor and acrylic, Deb is one of the few people I know of who works in casein, and she also teaches classes in the Cincinnati area. Please check out her blog.

And now I really have to follow up with passing this award along!! I've chosen several artists I already know, and a few that I've been following silently. So in no particular order, I am tagging: Connie Williams, Jeanette Jobson, Susan Beauchemin, Andy Smith, Steven Walker, Fábio Cembranelli, and Terry Rafferty. Visits to their blogs will definitely be worth your time.

And finally:
I promised that I would announce the winner of the first bloggiversary painting this weekend. At my husband's suggestion, I set up a "raffle" based on the number of comments I received from everyone in the past year and he drew a ticket from the bowl. Rhonda Carpenter -- I need your mailing address!!!