NEW PAINTING...NEW TITLE

The Santa Clara Valley Watercolor Society has a theme for their annual show. This year the theme is "On the Edge". I was thinking maybe I would enter this painting into the show. My new working title is "The Edge of Perception". I am open to other suggestions, so don't be shy!

I like this angle of the head much better. It is more pleasant and a hell of a lot easier to draw! I covered an old painting start with Gesso and let it dry. Then I drew the head on with Sanguine Pitt permanent pen. Next, using my new alphabet stamp set I "iced"each letter as I needed it with heavy gloss gel (used a plastic knife to spread the gel over the letter) and stamped it onto the paper. This was the most time consuming part of the painting. When the gel was dry, i coated the paper again with gesso. I used a rubber brayer to even out the gesso and I like the subtle texture and even surface this provided. You have to put gesso over the gel if you hope to have any watercolor stick to it.

When the last coat of gesso dried, you could see a faint ink line of the image. Perfect! I started out with yellow ochre for the background and then proceeded from there. I layered a number of color on the background and was disappointed that I couldn't see them. It just looked like texture. Then I decided to try the tissue technique used by George James on Yupo. I wet the surface and lifted paint off and VOILA! you could see the letters. It's not really legible but you can tell that it is wording of some sort. You can click on the detail to see the effect better. I am pleased with the background and how it integrates with the foreground. Overall, I am pleased with the results. I see one minor touch up (a light spot under the chin) that needs correcting. I'm having fun and learning a lot.