Finishing the Watercolor

What a blast.

I just finished a watercolor of approaching Juneau, Alaska. Juneau is an island city that must be reached by either air or boat. It has big mountains that steeply climb right out of the city. So the capital of Alaska has a considerable mountain habitat around it. Around the corner and up the draw a little is a viable glacier. The Mendenhall glacier drops its huge chunks of ice into the river about 14 miles for the city.

This painting was fun to do. Its my second foray into using this medium. This canvas is set up to be really forgiving. With just a little water and a bit of a scub the artist can get right down to the white canvas the started the painting. Watercolor canvas performs just like watercolor paper in that it will accept delicate washes and lifts. It does not tear or flake. It has an occasional pill like all canvas does.

My sister suggested that I set up a camera on a tripod and take the steps of this painting in action. There are 10 steps there were photographed and are now on flickr. You can take a look at them from the link on the side of this blog. I have left some commentary as to what happened at each step and what I was projecting that I needed to do in the next step. Most steps had one day between them. The steps took about an hour each. I would stop when I got tired of painting or when the paint needed to dry for the next step.

It was really fun for me.

: ) Pat