She teaches at MATC, greenfield parks & rec and Nicolet.
She uses 3 palletes with deep wells that she never cleans out. There is a blue, red & green pallet. She puts her yellows on both the red & green pallet. She started out with 6 transparent colors. Then she met Daniel Smith http://www.danielsmith.com/ and now has lots of colors including granular? colors. She mixes all her greens. None from tube. Opaque colors are put on bottom layers. Transparent colors on top. If you put opaque colors on top it can look muddy.
Her watercolor influences were Jean Crane http://www.leslielevy.com/posters_view.php?id=jcran and Terry Hoffman? At UW Madison she worked in acrylics & printmaking.
The difference between acrylics and watercolor is acrylics you can paint by feel & instinct whereas with watercolor you need to have a plan.
She likes to use 300# Fabriano paper, not hot press(No tooth, blotchy). Not arches. (She paints on both sides of the paper.) She doesn't tape her paper down. She places her paper on a Homasote board which is propped up at about a 20-30 degree angle. She used a plastic quart? yogurt/cottage cheese container for her water & only 1 paper towel. She doesn't generally paint wet into wet except in specific areas that she pre-wets with her brush right before applying the color.
She uses a #14 round cornel brush with a point for everything. She lets the paint flow & mix on the paper. She paints light to dark because you need to plan the lights and save them. She paints in layers. Important to leave enough whites.
She's been experimenting with watercolor ground over canvas and likes it. She's heard that you can apply this ground over areas in a painting that are too dark to bring it back but hasn't tried this yet. You have to spray these canvas waterground paintings once you're done.
She generally paints from photos that's she applied poster edge, pen & ink filters to and tweaked the greens, blues & cyans. Occasionally paints from life with still lifes. It takes several sessions for her to finish a painting.
The general steps she followed for this demo was
- pencil drawing
- apply water color
- apply inks (raw umber & burnt umber, then micron pen.)
She uses permanent markers like black/brown felt tip micron markers. She has several but likes 005 micron. She also has started using a bamboo pen and acrylic ink, liquitex from cheap joes and speedball from michaels. She likes the varying line you can get from the pen. Like painting with wood. She tries not to add too many lines, just enough.