Friday, February 11, 2011

Painting Crabs with watercolor on YUPO paper

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Ok, here are the first 3 stages of the crab painting.
I took a couple of the crabs from the reference photo and made up a composition that was appealing and carefully drawing it out on the Yupo paper. Yupo is a synthetic paper which is slick. The paint does not soak into the paper but dries on top.  The paint moves around and does it's own thing! So you never know how it will dry in the end!

Next, I decided to add some texture to the areas that I will leave white. This will tie in with the crabs and bring the painting to the edges. It also is designed to look like a crab net or cage, perhaps? I stamped in the designs with a piece of rubber matting, the kind that goes under area rugs.
When that had dried, I started to paint in the crab legs first and then start in on the bodies, allowing the legs to dry before starting the areas next to them so that the paints from legs would not blend in with the bodies.
I used Cerulean Blue, Permanent Rose and a bit of Hookers Green.

Tomorrow, I will add more of the crab legs!

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