Judy Morris Workshop - Day 2

This morning we woke up to dense fog. We did our morning walk down to the pier but you nearly had to walk into it to see that it was there. Here are a few photos.

By the time our 2 mile walk was done my hair was dripping wet.

I forgot to tell you the title of the workshop I am taking with Judy Morris. It is GREAT PAINTINGS…Hidden in Plain Sight. Judy spent a good part of the morning today showing us a variety of ways to get textures in our paintings or adding some "eye excitement" to them. She did a demo today of koi swimming in a pond with petals floating in the water. Everywhere you look in this painting is a surprise with a pattern in everything except the koi and the petals. She covered the koi with contact paper to protect it and then used a stencil pattern in the water area. Her stencil was a piece of embossed paper that she painted with a brown latex paint before pressing it on the paper. When the pattern was dry she painted over it with color.

I decided to use a photo reference I had taken in the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens a few years ago. Two Indian women wearing saris were walking with their backs to me and their heads turned slightly towards each other. I sketched the women on a piece of paper and traced it onto my watercolor paper. One of the things Judy likes to do is put a border somewhere around the painting. You can see I traced a pattern around 3 sides of the paper, I painted inside the design with latex metallic paint. Yes, Judy advocates using latex flat paint that you would get in a paint store. It is good to use for the pattens because repeated layers of water will not disturb it.

Here is how it looks with the entire border painted.

You can see several steps here. 

Next in my process was the salt technique for the pavement. I painted with quin gold, mixed with a bit of alizarin crimson and just a touch of raw sienna. I also painted over the border with a deeper mix of those colors. Then I added a bit of detail to the edges of the saris with gold gesso, which will resist the paint that is applied on top of it.

Here is a close up of the salted area and the painted border.

And the detail on the sari.

I worked in the studio until around 10 tonight, so I could get this done. The day passes very quickly when demos are being given. We did have a lot of painting time today, but that border (drawing it and painting it) took a lot of time. Hopefully what I do tomorrow will go quicker. lol