These paintings were demonstrations that I gave this week in my watercolor class. Gold metallic gesso was painted on hot pressed watercolor paper to create a smooth surface. Once dried it would allow lifting of subsequent layers of paint. (Credit Carla O’Connor for this idea-she talks about it in her video, “Figure Design in Gouache”.) In this painting I used straight watercolor, applied more thickly than normal watercolor painting, leaving areas of the gold showing through. The upper background was painted green, in a solid fashion, then lifted with a tissue to create a mottled look. The calligraphic marks on the right were added last.

In this photo, the painting on the left is also on a gold gesso watercolor paper surface, but was used as a plate to create the prints in the center and on the right. The original painting was just a quick, abstract paint design which was allowed to dry thoroughly. Then plain watercolor paper was soaked in water. With the middle painting, the paper was allowed to dry to a moist satin sheen stage before placing the plate on it. The painting on the right was more wet, but there was less paint on the plate so it still resulted in a subtle design, but a little fuzzier. I added a few accents of color to enhance the final paintings.

This was a lot of fun and the students seemed to enjoy it. They created some very interesting paintings with lots of mood and texture that would have been difficult to achieve any other way.