Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Central Park

I actually painted this painting twice. The first one I sold about a year ago. In this version I tried some new things.

First of all I did it on hot pressed paper. I usually work on cold pressed paper. Hot pressed paper is very smooth and does not absorb the paint as much. There are more back runs or blossoms and the paint dries faster. But it gives a smooth surface that I wanted to achieve for the ice cold water.

The next thing I did was limit my color pallette to only three colors, paynes grey, davy's grey and burnt umber to achieve the feeling of the cold temperature.

Over the last two weeks I taught my "Tricks" class in beginning watercolors. In this class I demonstrate different ways of creating textures and effects often with non-painting substances. For example after laying in a wash of color you sprinkle a little salt and little star shapes appear in the paint. It is always a fun class and people usually choose some tricks to enter into their repertoire of tools for painting.

In Central Park I have used three tricks. If you are one of the first two people who can guess what they are, I will give you a print of the painting. You need to write the three tricks used in the comments section below. You are not elligible if I have already told you the answer. This is for people in the continental United States only.

So good luck with this little contest and hope to hear from you soon.

8 comments:

Unknown said...

Okay. Here is my answers.
1. plastic wrap
2. erasing
3. sanding

Holly Rode (from your Weds. night Drawing class)
hrode78@gmail.com

Anonymous said...

Hi Kathy,
I think you have used plastic wrap, splattering and maybe masking fluid in Central Park!

Julia D'Addario

Anonymous said...

Kathy - I believe you used plastic wrap texturing, spattering and gouache, Thanks, Larry Goff

Meera Rao said...

beautiful painting! --you have captured the snow and grayness of cold winter days!

Becki said...

Kathy,
It's beautiful.

I think you used
1. plastic wrap
2. spattering
3. masking fluid.

Becki from your Monday night class

Anonymous said...

I really like this one. You really mastered the winter feel in this one.

It looks like
1 Spatter
2 Plastic Wrap
3 Gouache

Wes Kandare

Cindy Kemp said...

I think tricks were:
1. splatter
2. plastic wrap
3. gouache

Cindy Kemp

Kathy Staicer said...

Congradulations to Larry Goff and Wes Kandare!!! You were the first two people that guessed the three "tricks" used in this painting. I used plastic wrap to create the texture in the backgound, white gouache to capture the snow on the bridge and trees and spatter to capture the falling snow. I will be happy to deliver prints this week.
Thanks to everyone who entered the contest it was alot of fun.
Keep on painting.