I was commissioned a new squirrel piece and in typical Laura fashion — I get carried away and
produce three!
There’s a surprising amount of orange in the grey squirrels fur, so I’ve over dramatised this to create a fiery effect using watercolours and inks.
The homeless couple of squirrels are now inhabiting my shop, whilst the other lives happily across the pond.
Another American blue jay, they are just so beautiful!
I was playing around with drips and swirls of blue colour using inks and watercolour on Yupo paper. The Indian ink really bubbles and swirls when diluted with water and leaves a really interesting gritty stain on the paper when dry.
Since moving to Yupo I have started to miss some of the qualities of my cold pressed papers, so I broke some out and had a go at a pygmy kestrel.
He’s not finished but since the major buckling of the cold pressed paper, I thought I’d stop mid stroke and try and flatten him out before resuming flooding the paper with water — I’ve been taking major liberties with how much cold pressed paper can take, forgetting that it isn’t my forgiving Yupo.
This snap shot into a painting before it’s finished may aid me in future paintings, to maybe hint to me when to stop before I overwork something to death ...
The Virginia opossum or common opossum is the only marsupial found in Canada and the United States. They are little scavengers and what is most interesting to me is that they can cleverly play dead by prompting unpleasant smells, foaming from the mouth and baring teeth.
This is known as ‘play possum’, and it is comforting as when I was looking out for a new beast to paint I came across a lot of dramatically dead possums — very convincing!
This painted opossum is on Yupo paper and was created using a variety of inks and watercolours and is available in my shop.
Sticky, rich inks on Yupo paper merge together to help me illustrate the bold European goldfinch and American blue jay. Since moving from South London and into Kent I’ve been treated to an abundance of small, cheeky birds. Goldfinches are partial to dandelions, which we have plenty!
I thought I’d illustrate a goldfinch just because I’m thrilled that I get to see them regularly due to my neglectful attitude to gardening. I accompanied my goldfinch with the blue jay just for the lovely contrast in colouration.
Cold Pressed Horse
I’m going to embarrass myself again with another paper contrast, the drawing may not be as high quality and as proportionally accurate on the cold pressed paper, but ignoring that, the way I use the watercolour and ink is wildly different.
I really enjoy Yupo paper as you can see all mistakes can me amended with virtually no penalty to the paper. The colour sits on the surface swirling and merging into interesting things and doesn’t permanently absorb and stain the paper unlike the cold pressed paper, so you have all the time in the world to make something worth posting about!
Yupo Horse is available in my shop.
More hare’s I know but I just had to paint one on my new Yupo paper! He’s quite the stark contrast to my cold pressed watercolour paintings. My hare on the Yupo paper is much simpler, less erratic and more considered.
But my cold pressed watercolour painting sketches I feel I have completely ruined. They were decent ink drawings but when I added watercolours and inks I found it difficult to visualise how I wanted the pieces to go which resulted in a confused mess — not a complete waste though as I feel like it makes excellent contrast to how confident I feel on Yupo paper, and how I was really struggling with traditional paper before.
Yupo Watercolour Hare
Another interesting quality of Yupo paper — you can carve out images in a relief manner, which reminds me of the process of my drypoint prints. To make my angry wild cat, I drew my image onto the paper, and covered the entire surface of the paper with Indian ink. After the ink was dry, I used the guide drawing underneath to strip off the dry ink layers using wet cotton buds and paper towels to gradually reveal my feline.
I took a different approach with my rat piece, I added Indian ink where I wanted dark areas, and manipulated ink around the original drawing.
Here I showcase the lovely glassy quality of applying watercolours to Yupo paper! I used just watercolour and ink on this piece, even without alcohol inks you can achieve stunningly vibrant results.
Cold pressed watercolour goat
I painted the same goaty face on my regular cold pressed watercolour paper to compare how I get on with both papers, as embarrassing as it is to show — but I feel I redeem myself with my Yupo painting.
As you may have noticed, on my cold pressed watercolour painting I panic and start throwing colour around hoping for a recovery … whilst in my Yupo paper I can strip back colour easily with just a squirt of water, giving me greater confidence and allowing me the time to experiment, go wild and make mistakes without incurring paper ruining consequences!
Yupo watercolour goat
I’ve recently come across something special — Yupo Paper.
It is not your traditional paper, it is a plasticy paper, very thin but hugely versatile. This crocodile I painted I used a variety of media including alcohol inks and isopropyl alcohol among my other staples and the variety of textures you can produce is astonishing.
The water quickly evaporates off this paper so you can work on pieces faster, I can’t recommend highly enough the use of Yupo. If you’re not a confident watercolourist being able to alter a piece, strip out colour in a flash with a dab of water, rubbing alcohol or ammonia is a welcome change when you’re familiar with the unforgiving permenant nature of cold/hot pressed watercolour paper.
The colour you do apply dries in an almost stained glass window affect, translucent, glass like colours which merge like clouds which dry in seconds if your using alcohol inks. This crocodile piece is available in my shop.
These little green hummingbirds have been really fun to paint, I used lots of bright inks to highlight how beautiful these jewel like creatures are without going overboard and leaving plenty of white space — an aspect which I’ve been struggling with.
I was using my fineliner pen to darken particularly bright areas in the face instead of mixing up darker water colour paint as I’m still a bit of a novice when it comes to mixing watercolour paint.
I found this long lost sea turtle sorting through my artwork a few weeks ago. I really like the way the watercolours merge on his shell, and I created the sea foam and splashes using white inks which I defined with white pen.
I was also practicing some colour restriction on this piece using only orange, blue and yellow pigments.
A couple of small sketches here created using Indian ink and fineliner pens. I really enjoy drawing animals in these mediums, but I feel when painting I lose a lot of the line work due to me applying to much heavy paint on the paper. I want to get the balance right so my line work can be fully appreciated and not lost forever.
I haven’t looked to do another kingfisher since I was very happy with my Pied Kingfisher which was a bit of a turning point piece for me a year ago, and incidentally was one of the first paintings I ever sold at my first local exhibition.
These paintings were inspired by the Common Kingfisher, and were created using my nelgected hot pressed water colour paper.
Pigeons have to be my favourite animal, plucky, mischievous and super hardy, they never fail to make me smile. Also — very tricky to paint, lots of grey so couldn’t help injecting some limes and some oranges. These two were painted in watercolours and lots of blue ink.
Scruffy hummingbird drawings now, these little whizzing, jewel like beings are the focus of my next set of paintings. These drawings were created in Indian ink, graphite and fineliner. With the graphite drawings, I transfer them onto watercolour paper by flipping them face down onto my chosen paper and pressing really hard using pencils on the back — so I don’t have to redraw the original image onto expensive paper which could prove costly …
I never feel like I can do peacocks enough justice, they are trully incredible, which is why I have again painted yet another peacock. The hens aren't getting much love from me at the moment, I guess they are somewhat overshadowed — I'm sure to get to them soon.
I chose to lay bright inks down in the background, before propping my work up on an easel and using gravity and water to bleed the pigments into one another, creating these translucent streams of colour.
This is the largest peacock I've painted, A3 in size and is available in my shop, see my other peacocks from previous posts …
I’ve been experimenting with further segmentation with white pen and ink in this piece, I feel using this technique could lead to some exciting places with enough exploration. I’ve also tipped the page forward to allow for the watercolour to pool and drip in certain areas, whilst using straws to stretch ink across the paper to suggest a mane. This lion is available in my shop.
I was having a bit of a wild, reckless time with colour this week, not the best examples of restraint or consideration but interesting results nonetheless.
Lots of overworking is evident here, I’ve used water soluble pens in the faces of each fox as watercolour dulls when you add water and these pens stay pretty intense. I’ve also used straws and tried segmenting up the foxy faces and bodies which needs a lot more focus.
Again, not the best work, lots of refining ahead!
Here is a couple of things I got inking this week, my blue bunny and devious looking emu. The simple blue bunny was made with watercolour, inks and white pigment. The emu was brought to paper using a couple of neat calligraphy pens gifted to me, I shall paint him in due course!
