Painting on slick plastic takes a lot of the work out of your hands. You are not the painter so much as the facilitator.
Lay in color, let it dry, lay in more color. Sounds normal doesn’t it. However, depending on how much water your paint has in it , it will float anywhere there is moisture. sometimes this is not so good and sometimes it is wonderful. You certainly have to be open to where the work might take you.
As I do this more and more I am developing an unusual technique. Firstly, two benefits of working on Yupo are that your colors are brilliant. They are not diluted by soaking into paper. They don’t soak in at all. They dry on top. If, however, there is color somewhere you don’t want it, you can easily wipe the paint off and go back to the white of the paper. In these pictures all the facial highlights have been wiped out. This ability gives you a lot of freedom in your work.
More recently I am using the “Wipe Out” as a major element in my work. As I near the end of the piece I get a paper towel or tissue and wipe out wholesale sections of the work. This loosens it up a lot and makes it much freer. In the pictures above I have wiped out some on the right piece. I entered it into the SC Watermedia show. It was rejected, so I used that opportunity to go back in and really loosen it up. Not too sure that you can see it in the reworked left piece, but I also have gone back in with watercolor pencil and worked all over the piece. So much fun. You really have to be willing to tear into something that might be OK in order to hopefully make something much better.
Oddly enough I can’t go straight to the more minimalist work. I have to work through the layers of full paint, full picture and then go, “Oh, there’s too much here.” Of course you always take the chance that you’ll take away something you really needed. Oh, well, you painted it the first time, you can paint it again.
Here is another work in progress. I think there might be more wiping out left to do.