Elephant Sunset

I wasn’t going to post this until after Christmas because it’s for my friend. But when I talked to her it sounded like she was curious to see it and wanted me to ruin the surprise, so I am. This was painted on a 12″x9″ piece of paper, but it’s shown cropped to about 11.5″x7.5″ which is about what it should be matted for.

I was asked to paint whatever I wanted for this one. It is somewhat inspired by the fact that when my friend went to Africa a couple years ago she came home to find out that most of her photos were lost. I don’t know if she saw elephants or yellow, orange and purple sunsets, but as I mentioned, it’s only somewhat inspired by that.

I am painting other Christmas presents this month, but I probably won’t post them until after Christmas.

Close ups 

New paper

I used some new paper I have never used before for this one. I bought an Arches Watercolor Block and I think I love it now. It’s great paper that can really stand up to lots of washes of color, which means they can be really saturated and bright if you want them to. You can see from these scans that the colors are pretty bright. It took quite a few passes with the same colors to make that happen.

I have had some trouble with my paper starting to disintegrate by the time I am finishing up on the cheaper stuff. This is pretty expensive for watercolor paper at about $1.40 a sheet for 12″x9″ but it’s well worth it.

With a watercolor block they all come glued together in a stack and you have to cut the finished piece off with a razor blade which is sort of scary. But, the benefits outweigh the fear of slicing through a finished picture.

I haven’t tried any frisket (masking liquid) on it yet, but if it can hold up to that being painted on and rubbed off I will be even more happy.