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?