Illustration Friday: Faded

"Erica ran and played in the tall grasses until the day faded into night".

This painting is a watercolor on rag paper.

Product review of Daniel Smith's Watercolor Ground

For today's post I'm doing a product review of Daniel Smith's Watercolor ground. This brand new painting ground had my interest as soon as I heard about it because it claims to make it possible to paint watercolors on almost any surface including glass, metal and wood. This sounded pretty exciting to me.

I had an upcoming submission to work on where I had really wanted to submit a watercolor but the show's requirements called for an 8"x8" gallery wrapped canvas. A perfect excuse to buy the ground. I looked for it locally at Opus but they don't stock it. I tried ordering through Daniel Smith but with the cost of customs, tax and the time it would take to ship it, it wasn't worth it. As luck would have it my local art supply store, Pheonix Art Workshop stocks it. Yeah for local!

Here you can see the canvas texture.

8"x8"

The gesso itself is quite thick and is a bit tricky to brush on without it holding the brush strokes. I put it on a pre-primed canvass and I think I should have coated it a couple of times because some of the canvass was more absorbent than other areas. I found that I wasn't able to pool my pigment or drip in concentrated color like I can with paper so it wasn't as satisfying that way. I was able to easily lift my mistakes though with a damp brush. The paint always seemed to stay water-soluable. At $20 for a pint it's fairly expensive but I think it will last a long time. Have you tried this new ground? What things did you discover with it?

Showing in New York

Look out! I'm showing in New York! Are you impressed? I'd like to say this is the first of many future shows in the Big Apple but this one didn't take too much work to get into. My daughters ( 3 yr. and 6 yr.) and myself created some pieces for the 6"x6" show being held at the Rochester  Contemporary Art Center. This all inclusive show asks artists to create pieces no bigger than 6"x6" and sign them on the back to keep the creator anonymous. The pieces will be shown en masse starting June 5 until June 11 with each piece selling for $20. A wide variety of people have submitted and there are a few celebrity participants as well. This is a fundraiser for the center and it looks as though it's quite popular because there is a lottery system for priority purchasing. As well, online selling that will start on June 7th. You can view the 5,000 plus submissions here. There are a few I would like to put a twenty on.

Below are our submissions. Shhhhhhh. It's supposed to be anonymous. You won't tell anyone right?

watercolor

drypoint with watercolor

watercolor

watercolor