Door County October 2017

I spent the last couple weeks in Door Co. at peak color time and it was just gorgeous especially out on the tip of the peninsula where I stayed.  We were blessed with perfect weather the first week and lousy weather the 2nd.  It really was still beautiful even under cloudy skies but one day what felt like gale force winds blew constantly for about 36 hours.  Saw lots of deer and heard the coyotes calling every night and a Screech Owl which I don't hear often in Madison. 

The first week I painted with pastels and sketched with ink outdoors and then took a 6 day "Watercolor Techniques" class at the Clearing in Ellison Bay which is near where I stay.  I had taken this class in 2004 and 2005 when I was watercolor novice.  It was gratifying to see I had learned a few things in the meantime but the cool new thing I learned was a way of doing monoprints with watercolor.  I was able to pull 2 off the 2nd one.  Both prints were painted based on my plein air ink sketches from the previous week.  The colors in the both the prints and pastel are a bit off as I don't have as good of lighting as I need for taking photos of my paintings so I do think they look a bit better in real life. 

I look forward to doing more monoprints with this process this winter when I am too big of a sissy to be outside.  At least I can manage to sketch outside (or in the warm car) and turn the sketches into prints.  The process is very easy using a medium called Createx, Plexiglas and a big serving spoon for burnishing the back of the print.  Apparently there are You Tube videos about it.  I used the paper recommended by one of our 2 teachers, Strathmore Aquarius which is a bright white and dries perfectly flat. 

My first monoprint (I forgot to reverse the image so instead of Sunset at Rowley's Bay it could be titled Sunrise at Toft Point)

First print of Rowley's Bay from the Nature Conservancy property

2nd pull from the remaining pigment on the plate

Soft pastel on Diane Townsend paper - she doesn't make this paper anymore but is making a new dry ground product with pumice that you can work into your paper before using pastels; I am going to order some as there are some handmade papers I want to try that might work well with that.  I will do a post about it once I have experimented.