Failure is your friend?

When I was reading Nita Engle's "How to Make a Watercolor Paint Itself" I noticed how lightheartedly she talks about "failed" paintings and unsuccessful attempts. Her "failed" paintings look like my greatest ambitions. Same with a lot of other wonderful painters that I found on the web: they seem to be quite fine with admitting that they, too, fail, and moving on. So what is the secret? The more work you produce the easier it is to discard one of so many? The better you get at what you're doing, the higher your standards get and so you push yourself to do better and dismiss weaker art?

I like getting things right the first time but this painting below is actually a second, and almost third attempt. Almost third - because while working on it the second time, I struggled through a time or two when I wanted to wash the paint off yet again and start over.

I'm pretty happy with the outcome though. Already sold it on Etsy, too!  Everybody likes cherry blossom I guess :)

New sketches, and more paint chips

Virtual Paintout - Stavanger, Norway:

I misspelled the name of the town...such a shame. The sketch is on Yupo, around 6.75x7 inches. I really do enjoy virtual paintouts. I feel like some tourist-treasure-hunter when my little yellow Google guy hits the road in search of a nice view. I also read about the place.

This is my ex-neighbor's horse Dezel (pronounced as "diesel"), which happens to fit EDM 44 - an animal. A very beautiful animal. Oh yeah, I misspelled his name, too.

And EDM 109 - a clock!

Another paint chip :)

Sold a watercolor on Yupo painting!

...and I haven't even blogged about it yet. So, here it is, some spring blossom from Southern California :)

Watercolor on Yupo, the synthetic paper

Yupo is an interesting painting surface. I finally tried a couple of things on it with watercolor and I feel like I'm only beginning to understand the way it works. It is definitely different from the traditional cotton cold press watercolor paper. Pros I've discovered so far:

• paint stays bright and saturated (of course, you probably use less water than with cotton cold press)
• the way that the paint mixes on paper creates interesting effects (do see the full size pictures!)
• paint stays wet for much longer than on cotton cold press (or hot press). I guess this could be a disadvantage, too, but it does give you more time to play.
• Yupo does not buckle

Cons:

• Yupo is extremely sensitive to any at all grease. While this can be used to create nice effects in the painting, I was a little disappointed to see my own fingerprints all over the paintings. You do need to be tidy when working on Yupo.
• layering of paint, while still an option, doesn't work quite like it would on cotton paper. The underlying layer tends to smudge and mix with the new one. In the painting of poppies, I wish I didn't do the second layer.

Other observations, which I wasn't sure if they were good or bad yet:

• It's harder to control the paint on Yupo than it is on cotton paper. I am suspecting, though, that it is a matter of practice and habit. A lot of people claim that watercolor is difficult in general, and we know it's not true ;)
• It is relatively easy to scratch the paint away from the surface of the paper. I used this effect in the painting, but I also found myself a little worried later that the painting would get scratched just from handling.

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