Painting in Progress "Little Boy Blue" Watercolor on Yupo

Little Boy Blue 11x14 watercolor on yupo

Well I have had so much fun painting flowers on Yupo, synthetic paper, that I wanted to try to do a portrait. I wanted to paint something simple, when I remembered a picture I took of my little boy a few years ago that I thought would be perfect. 

Here is the beginning. I paint Big washes of color and then tilt the paper to make the color run. 

 Here is the next step. Be patient with me on this painting. Yupo is funny stuff. I paint an area of color and then I have to wait all day for it to dry before I can do the next area.

Next I painted the hair. I was toying with the idea of leaving his hair blue but, I got carried away. And.... I was trying to add more shadow to his shoulder and ended up lifting all the old color. that was too bad because I kinda liked that area. One of the hazards of painting on Yupo all the color lifts really easily. I usually paint with lots of layers but, on yupo you have to go with just one. On the bright side you can pretty much lift, or erase, anything you want. Usually with watercolor anything you paint is there pretty much forever.

I painted his shirt brown to balance out the brown hair. while the paint was still wet I accidentally dropped a piece of paper on the wet paint. I kind of liked the texture it made do I did it in a few more spots. well see if I decide to leave it. I also added a little shadow to his eyes and some color to his lips.

 Just adding some some more shading

I'm not sure if I like it or hate it. I am working on the shading. this is getting frustrating, when I paint in watercolor I usually do lots of glazing in many layers. I can't do that on this paper because all the color will just lift off. All the colors on the face are very subtle I can't get a good photo of it with my camera.

Well this is it. I framed it but I haven't varnished it yet, I still may want to make some changes.

What do you think?

Real Vision

I was driving home from an eye doctor appointment with Jim when he said "I'm glad I wasn't born blind because I learned lots of things when I could see that I never would have known if I were born blind"  Wow. I thought he couldn't remember what it was like to have "normal" vision.  It is amazing the things that Jim is grateful for. I have never heard him complain about his vision loss, most of the time he refuses to admit that he is "visually impaired" he will tell people that he doesn't see very well out of one eye (a vast understatement). I thought that he really believed he could see just fine because he didn't know what he was missing but, apparently he does remember what it was like when he could see and instead of being bitter that his vision is gone, he is grateful that he had good vision at one time. 

Mothers day

2011

bitter sweet mothers day yesterday. My sweet husband cleaned the kitchen and cooked dinner. My second oldest bought me a dozen roses, another son gave me a box of my favorite cookies, my youngest boy made me “breakfast in bed” and rubbed my feet as I ate it, that was all wonderful. But, it was the first mother's day in 18 years that I didn't have a child in the choir at church singing mother's day songs, and I saw the other moms get little things their kids made in Primary and my kids are all too old for that now too. I have been looking forward for months to talking to my missionary son, and I guess we talked for an hour but, it seemed like 5 minutes, Just like all the really good things in life it was over far too soon. As we said good bye and hung up I realized that it probably will be another 4 years of mothers days skyping missionary sons before my entire family is together again on mother's day. That's six years in a row. bitter and sweet. Don't get me wrong I am very happy about my boys going on missions but, gosh I sure do miss them. I guess that's all part of being a mom. You love the little buggers so much just the way they are and you want them to stay that way forever but, it would break your heart if they never grew up and reached their full potential. I guess that's why mom's cry when their children reach milestones they are proud and happy but at the same time their heart is breaking as they are saying goodbye to the child that they love so much as he grows into a man, and they know he will never be the same again.