A fun evening with Deborah Swan MacDonald - December 2, 2016

We had a wonderful time at our December meeting watching Deborah Swan-McDonald demonstrate her pouring technique.  She provided a great overview of how it is done:  first she tranfers her drawing to the watercolor paper (140lb Arches), next masks out shapes (with “ugly” brushes), and then pours paint around the design. She generally starts with 3 basic colors mixed to a thin gravy-like consistency. To adjust the color she might squirt water to make the paint run, use a pipette to squirt more paint in a particular area, or tilt the piece to let the paint swirl around.  
Did I mention the all-important large receptacle to catch the drippy paint? Don’t forget that necessary detail!  As the work dries, she adds more masking to preserve the color in additional parts of the design, then more layers of poured or squirted paint.  Finally, when it’s dry, she removes the masking and refines the design with direct painting. It was an exciting process to watch! This looked like so much fun and her painting was beautiful!  Gotta try this!!