By I started a weekly Friday afternoon watercolor class yesterday. The assignment was based on a negative painting by Rick Surowicz, who does amazing work. You can find him on YouTube and on Facebook. This is the video from which this painting is a derivative.
A few things . . . first, I didn’t have any frisket / masking fluid in class. I had barely anything! All my stuff – most of my stuff – is still packed up from the house repairs. I ransacked a bit and found some things. Like tape – so I used tape to mask off some areas inside the painting. Second, I used student-grade paper, and some of the paper’s surface came off when I removed the tape. I think you can see the areas if you look closely.
The way I see it, the whole point of this exercise is to work on negative painting. Exact replication of Surowicz’s painting is not the point – the point is to learn from it. I struggle with negative painting, but learning to just let go of things when I paint and let things happen, while hard, is something I am finally beginning to do. To quote the Beatles, “let it be, let it be”!
The painting was, to a point, successful. I did some negative painting. I wanted to work with complementary colors and washes, but try to control a bit, such as the leaf shapes, here and there.
Now that it is done, the real question is which end is up? Click on the first image to move through all four versions.
I think I like this one the best (fourth in the series). It’s below. Maybe it expresses the wind and whirling leaves and branches and twigs.
Journey by Paper 
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