“Exhibition Preparations & Sunset Cruise”

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The first three days provided lots of colorful scenery to complete five paintings, three of which were to be ready for exhibition on Tuesday night. In preparation for traveling to Curacao, I determined to use a new technique of watercolor painting on Aquabord, which whould allow me to paint, varnish the finished painting, and then frame it without glass in a “floating frame”. (Traveling with 8 or 10 frames with glass was more than I wanted to consider!) The flammable spray varnish had to be shipped by cargo ship several weeks in advance of the event.

While this new painting surface presented some challenges with painting technique, the outcome is an especially vibrant painting (the colors still look wet and brighter than when they dry on paper) and, mounted in the new type of frame, the image appears to actually float in front of a nice black border, which very nicely brings out the deeps tones in the paintings.

Sometimes we need to improvise! The paintings were ready for varnishing and the varnishing must take place in a dust-free area, while trying to keep the overspray to a mnimum. I was downtown, and it is quite windy here, so while Nancy was teaching a class in town, I had to create a “makeshift varnishing area”. The parking garage and a “found” vinyl shopping bag became a terrific, safe, limited-dust and nearly wind-free area. The photo here shows the outcome…three framed paintings, ready for exhibition!

Once these three paintings were ready, we were able to paint some more, and then we took a beautiful sunset cruise on Miss Ann with Captain Bit! Large expanses of smooth watercolor washes for skies have been a bit of a challenge on the Aquabord, so while most artists painted the outdoor scenery of a lighthouse, shoreline and the sunset, I stayed up from in the captains area to do a painting of the interior of the boat.

More to come!

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