Wednesday, January 9, 2013

PICTURE PERFECT Trio of Flowers and Contact Paper

PICTURE PERFECT
Watercolor 11x15
 
I have a love/hate relationship with masking fluid. On the one hand it is a great way to preserve the white paper - on the other hand it can be a mess to use and you have to apply it carefully so you don't end up with awkward white shapes. For Picture Perfect I decided to avoid this whole dilemma and just use contact paper to save my white spaces. I cut out the flower shapes and a few buds from the sticky paper, pressed it on my 140 lb watercolor paper and then quickly wet everything and painted in my background and foreground colors.
 
When everything was dry, I removed the contact paper and began painting the flowers by shading between the petals and adding definition to the centers. I used some negative painting to pull out the leaves and stems in the foreground and was quite happy with the final result!