Good Thing She’s Cute

All my paintings in the past year were done in acrylics, and now I’m trying to ease back into watercolors. Over the years I’ve done many watercolor paintings using a limited palette – basically just red, yellow and blue – such as Jerry Van Music Man and Grandpa’s Fiddle Break. In those cases, I mixed the pigments on the palette to create new colors, then brushed the mixed colors on the paper. Now I’m trying another method: letting the 3 colors mix directly on the watercolor paper. It’s a technique used by many watercolor artists but one I’ve never attempted. I was motivated to give it a try after viewing the paintings of eminent watercolor artist Lian Zhen, which blew me away. I was investigating his work online since he will be the juror for the 2018 Tennesse Watercolor Society Exhibition (which I intend to enter). He uses several different palettes of 3 watercolor primaries, but I selected three I’ve used before with good mixing results: Holbein Royal Blue, American Journey Coral Red, and American Journey Carr Yellow. The choice of colors is important; each needs to be a pure tone so when mixed they won’t create shades of brown or grey. For example, a greenish-blue like Phthalo Blue Green Shade when mixed with Coral Red as I used would not create a clean, pure purple. There are many good choices for painting from a limited palette, from all the professional watercolor manufacturers.

As you can see, the colors end up very bright and not realistic in this method. The success of the painting depends strongly on values, which I wrote about in a blog post recently. The more the color is diluted, the lighter the value. Some places the colors blend with soft edges, other places have sharp divisions between colors… which creates more interest. Leaving random whites from unpainted paper adds a bit of sparkle. I also went back into the dried painting with my X-acto knife and scratched pigment off to reveal the white paper below, such as in the eye highlights and whiskers. This is possible because I’ve used a very thick watercolor paper, Arches 300lb. I love that particular paper since it doesn’t buckle when wet and the cold-press version had a nice texture. In the end, I also painted some strokes of the same colors to indicate the fur and freckles and to intensify some of the darkest areas.

The subject of this painting is my four-year old dog Maggie Mae. She was truly the ‘puppy from hell’ but after age 2 became much more sweet, relaxed, loving, and under control. On her worst days we coined the phrase “‘…good thing she’s cute” – her expressions made it hard to be angry for long. We rescued her, so her heritage is unknown but best guess is coon hound mixed with beagle. Her big eyes are captivating and she is very photogenic.

I like this painting process, and it stretches me to try something different. I need more practice at it however; when working in the wet-on-wet foundation stages you have to keep moving and complete a lot in one session. I’m more accustomed to painting for an hour one day, two hours another day, etc. Also, this painting is small, about 10″ x 8″, and I want to use the painting method on much bigger paintings.

You’ll probably be seeing more watercolors done similarly by me in the near future. Try this yourself!