Painting in Portland

I am in Portland to help take care of my grand-daughter Lily. A couple of weeks ago a dog bit her in the face. :(
I packed up the biggest suit case we had. Not just for my clothes, but for the inflatable mattress. My daughter had just moved to Portland the month before leaving her furniture behind. We were worried my suitcase would go over the 50lb. weight limit, but it weighed in at exactly that... 50lbs!

I came out on Jet Blue and they have a policy of no oil or water based paints, so I packed up my watercolor palette (dry) and brought along mini watercolor paper to paint art cards. An art card is 2 1/2" x 3 1/2" so I could pack a lot of them!
So far I have only painted 2 cards, they are in my whimsical style.

 This one (above) is titled "Breakfast at Tiffany's, 

Pupper's and Miss Pretty Kitty's. 

This art card is titled "Finding Spring". 

It is fun, experimental and a good exercise to paint this small. I will continue to paint while here in Portland. It rains a lot and often cancels my daily walk... I thought my waterproof windbreaker would be sufficient but I was wrong... so I will happily paint when it rains.

Arches Watercolor Paper Disappointment

A few months back I moved. Which means I was forced to go through and organize all my art supplies. This past week I needed to paint a watercolor to enter into the Utah Watercolor Society Spring Show. This year we have the amazing John Salminen to jury our show.

Determined to use some of the supplies I had in store, I found some Arches 140 lb. cold press watercolor paper. I haven't used Arches for several years now but my memory was soon refreshed as to the reason for that.

Starting the painting with the first couple of washes was fine, but then as I applied more layers of color, the paper acted very weird and the colors would not blend properly. Frustrated, I kept on going; I had a deadline to meet and no time to start another painting! If you have read my blog at all you may have gathered that I tend to procrastinate painting for shows til the last couple of days before it's due.

The painting ended up ok, but I wasn't pleased with the face of the girl. Painting skin tones can be delicate work, and this paper would not let me blend the colors as well as I wanted. *sigh*.

The title of this painting is "Then It Dawned On Her". Kind of a poetic tribute to why I will never buy Arches again. Yes...

NOW I remember why I switched to Fabriano WC paper.