Thought this subject would work well for a poured watercolor, but ended up never doing a true pour finding I could not let go of having control of where the color flowed. So, the first layer was put in with a large brush onto wet 300 lb. Arches CP, while the second layer was done with a pipette on a wet surface using the warm triad of New Gamboge, Naphthol Red and Cobalt Blue. The yellow areas of the butterfly were masked out after the first brushed application of paint and frisket was splattered on the rocks. Wetting the entire surface again, a pipette was used to apply the three colors again, with more frisket spatter after it dried. The rocks had too much color and were scrubbed off with a synthetic brush and water revealing the texture of the paper. After masking the other markings on the butterfly, I washed over the butterfly using Sepia and started directly painting the shadows on the rocks with Indanthrene Blue and a mixture of the two for the deepest shadows. Lastly, the frisket was removed, a bit of mixed orange was applied to the yellow areas of the butterfly and the rocks were spattered with the dark mix.
On the Rocks, 11” x 15” Watercolor, ©Johanna Cellucci
At the start, I was not happy the way it was turning out, envisioned tearing it up and finding something else to work on. After letting it sit for a week, I figured why not just play with it. The result isn’t my usual work, but does have some interest and surely a lot of texture.