Koi

I know, this doesn't have a very creative name but I get tired of naming paintings and I just wasn't feeling particularly creative today so "Koi" was the best I could do.  The inspiration for this painting was a long, skinny piece of plexiglass that I have that I thought I could use for framing so I cut a piece of paper from my watercolor paper roll and decided that Koi would be a fun subject for this long orientation.

My plexi is 48" long and this paper is 44" long which would allow for a mat when I frame it but I think I will cut it down a little bit so that I can use a standard size mat (32" x 40").  I could buy a 40" x 60" mat but I think this painting could use a little cropping so I'll do that instead.

I haven't painted Koi for awhile so it was fun to get back to one of my favorite subjects.  Doing multiple glazes on very wet paper gave some really nice effects.  This painting has a soft, blurry look which is very different from how my paintings usually look and I'm really happy with the result.

Koi
Image Size 44" x 13"
Watercolor

Category › koi paintings , nancy goldman , Watercolor koi paintings

WIP slideshow for Watery World on TerraSkin

Here is the WIP slideshow for Watery World.  I think it was harder and took more time to make this than it did to paint the painting.

I've decided that I need to stick with painting and stay out of the technical world as much as possible.  It's much too stressful!

The music that is playing is "Fingerdance" by Billy McLaughlin.

Category › how to paint videos , koi paintings , nancy goldman , painting with liquid acrylic , TerraSkin

Watery World - on TerraSkin

This painting wins the prize for the most fun to paint.  I've always loved to paint Koi - which you know if you've been following my blog for any length of time - but painting them on Terra Skin is wonderful!  The surface, along with using acrylics like watercolors, allowed me to get the feeling of water and know that I could layer without disturbing my previous painting.  I am going to continue fiddling with this a bit more but I wanted to post it for this week's painting.  It took SO long to paint.  It's large, 25" x 35", and a lot of the time was spent waiting for layers to dry.  This was painted with  a combination of pouring and direct painting.  So far, this probably has about 20 thin layers of paint, which gives it a wonderful translucent quality.  I took WIP pictures which I will make into a slide show later this week (if the pictures turned out) so you can see my process.

Watery World - on TerraSkin
Image size 25" x 35"
Acrylic

Category › acrylic koi , koi paintings , nancy goldman , TerraSkin

Fish and Flotsam - Watercolor

Here is the finished painting of the WIP I posted a couple of months ago. It has taken much longer than I thought it would and it's been a real journey. I didn't have a plan when I started this painting. I poured paint in that abstract shape that's on top of the fish and then tried to find my way. It's been fun and frustrating but I'm happy with the outcome. It's a bit weird but I think it's fun to stray from the norm every now and then.

The paper I used for this painting is one that I bought several years ago but never wanted to try because I was afraid that it would be unpredictable. For this project, it seemed perfect. It is called St Armand and it is a handmade paper, I believe. It has a wonderful texture and accepted the paint really well. Paints with a lot of sediment are my favorites and this paper really showed their beauty. The photo doesn't show the texture but in real life, it's really neat.

Fish and Flotsam
Image size 22" x 30"
Watercolor
Framed
$950.00

Category › Koi fish painted on handmade paper , koi paintings , nancy goldman , watercolor koi