My Creative Process
I start most projects on my laptop, in the case of wildlife art by compositing reference photos into a montage that is both representative and creative. Once I have a composited image, I use a pressure sensitive Huion 1060 Pro graphics tablet and stylus to trace the outlines and sketch in any detail areas. This I then print out to size, as an outline, which is then transferred to my 3′ x 2′ lightbox (home made, using four, 2′, 18 Watt LED bulbs, which produce the equivalent of 100 Watts each.
Over this I tape my sheet of 30″ x 22″ 300 lb watercolor paper. Lately I’ve been using Arches rough, but I’m testing seven or eight potential replacement stocks, as Arches is just a bit too absorbent to allow for the seamless large, blended background panels I paint.
I usually start by applying liquid frisket (masking fluid) by Winsor & Newton, to any fine detail areas that I want to preserve the paper color in, then lay in a clear water wash over the background panel, then, while still wet, lay in a low-contrast blend of at least two colors. I used to do this the other way around, as in the example below of the Harmonica boat painting, but if the background color is orange or yellow in hue, it can too easily become stained as it reactivates darker pigments from the edges of the subject.
After my wet on wet blended background panel is done, and when it is still satin-wet, I occasionally drop some clear water over select areas to tr and prompt a deliberate bloom.
Once teh background is clear, I lay in loose washes of color or detailed areas, depending upon my whim, and build up gradually, working wet-on-dry and wet-on-wet till most of my basic areas are blocked in. While teh paint is still very wet, if I am going to use salting to lift patterned textures I will scatter sea salt in select areas. Once dry, I brush off the salt (sometimes it needs to be scraped with a palette knife) and glaze details over the textured areas.
In this way I build up loose areas of texture and certain, more focused areas of intense detail, alternating between a #12 synthetic sable and a #zero. Because I use rough watercolor paper, I’m usually not aiming at hair-by-hair fine details, but I can get a surprising amount of surface detail in, even with 300 ln rough paper!
Once the form has been detailed I usually step back, squint and lay in subtle glaze washes of Payne’s grey or burnt umber for shadows. Then, if the firsket was covering areas that will remain white, the last thing I do is remove the frisket and add text.
