Catherine Lepp’s latest series of watercolors presents a striking yet delicate blend of colors on rice paper. I’m delighted to share some of her newest works with you.
You can see right away that these watercolors are not painted on the typical cold press watercolor paper. This paper is smooth, delicate, ethereal. Catherine Lepp is painting on rice paper. Rice paper is highly absorbent, rewarding watercolorists with vibrant colors, but the way the paper picks up water and pigment can be challenging to work with. A bit too much water can cause excessive bleeding. Layering requires light, careful strokes to prevent tearing the delicate paper. The natural bleeding and blending effects create beautiful gradients and soft transitions within crisp edged watermarks. These details are part of why I am especially enamored with these new expressive watercolors by our New York drawing and painting instructor Catherine Lepp. Take a look at this expressive painting of trees below, and how it glows like stained glass.
The paintings below appear to be from the same scene. The one on the left is a fairly familiar landscape scene. The painting on the right has a similar composition, but the saturated colors and pools of vivid gradations vibrate as if life and light itself was in it!
Look at this pair of sunsets. Layers of bold color blooming into each other, as if excited to play. The yellow in the second painting is so physical it heats the paper above the deep greens, and the sun behind the sky is shy. One red line at the bottom of the composition responds to the yellow “back atcha.”
These remind me of Mondrian’s early drawings of the tree, as he was beginning to move the branches into abstract shapes. See how the rhythm of branches cuts the composition into an abstraction of lines and spaces? Catherine’s lines have higher energy than Mondrian’s organized structure and flow.
Mondrian’s Tree
Piet Mondrian 1912
These appear to be two sketches of a similar idea. The composition left is more based on value, to the right, an activity of color. Look how the pencil lines arching across the top frame the scene differently than the active orange? The colorful one is more balanced, the analogous blue, green, yellow is heavier on one side than the other.
Did you know?
Rice paper is not made from rice, or the rice plant. “Rice paper” was erroneously coined by Europeans to refer to Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese paper, equating the white of the paper with the white grains of rice they eat.
Rice paper is made from mulberry plants. Now you know.
It has taken me some time to realize the artistic benefits of figure drawing online vs in the studio, but I’m getting it. Whereas large fluid physical gestures with movement and energy will likely wait until we are back in the studio, drawing online puts the model within a screen, and that screen is moveable. …
Portrait of Anu Garg, author of a word a day, A Word A Day: A Romp Through Some of the Most Unusual and Intriguing Words in English, and more. Anu is a brightly smiling person, but sitting still-ish for any amount of time (15 minutes?) tends to make people look serious. I want to draw …
A few days ago I posted the Portrait Awards for 2022. 13 artists won prizes and recognition for their artworks , but there were a few more artworks that I wanted to share. Sometimes it’s good to have an art buddy, someone you can go to museums with, someone who can critique your work and …
Today’s OBSERVATIONAL Challenge: Make a quick gesture drawing from observation without lifting your drawing utensil. Instead of moving around the outline, let your line wonder across the surface of the form. Think about how to translate 3 dimensional form to a flat piece of paper. Post your work To be eligible for prizes, (yes prizes!) …
Catherine Lepp: Watercolors on Rice Paper
Catherine Lepp’s latest series of watercolors presents a striking yet delicate blend of colors on rice paper. I’m delighted to share some of her newest works with you.
You can see right away that these watercolors are not painted on the typical cold press watercolor paper. This paper is smooth, delicate, ethereal. Catherine Lepp is painting on rice paper. Rice paper is highly absorbent, rewarding watercolorists with vibrant colors, but the way the paper picks up water and pigment can be challenging to work with. A bit too much water can cause excessive bleeding. Layering requires light, careful strokes to prevent tearing the delicate paper. The natural bleeding and blending effects create beautiful gradients and soft transitions within crisp edged watermarks. These details are part of why I am especially enamored with these new expressive watercolors by our New York drawing and painting instructor Catherine Lepp. Take a look at this expressive painting of trees below, and how it glows like stained glass.
The paintings below appear to be from the same scene. The one on the left is a fairly familiar landscape scene. The painting on the right has a similar composition, but the saturated colors and pools of vivid gradations vibrate as if life and light itself was in it!
Look at this pair of sunsets. Layers of bold color blooming into each other, as if excited to play. The yellow in the second painting is so physical it heats the paper above the deep greens, and the sun behind the sky is shy. One red line at the bottom of the composition responds to the yellow “back atcha.”
These remind me of Mondrian’s early drawings of the tree, as he was beginning to move the branches into abstract shapes. See how the rhythm of branches cuts the composition into an abstraction of lines and spaces? Catherine’s lines have higher energy than Mondrian’s organized structure and flow.
Mondrian’s Tree
These appear to be two sketches of a similar idea. The composition left is more based on value, to the right, an activity of color. Look how the pencil lines arching across the top frame the scene differently than the active orange? The colorful one is more balanced, the analogous blue, green, yellow is heavier on one side than the other.
Did you know?
Rice paper is not made from rice, or the rice plant. “Rice paper” was erroneously coined by Europeans to refer to Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese paper, equating the white of the paper with the white grains of rice they eat.
Rice paper is made from mulberry plants. Now you know.
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