Creative Play to Avoid Burnout

My last blog post showed my completed lamb soft sculpture.  Before I start a new project, I just need to relax and play a bit.  Working on a project for a long time can leave me feeling burned out and not enthusiastic to be diving into some large project right away. 

I started the lamb project on the first of April.  It would not have taken so long to complete, but spring started our travel season and we have been on the go for weeks.  My time spent working on the lamb was hit or miss.  The net result was that I had spent weeks working on a lamb that was an off-white color for weeks.  I missed doing something with color.  And I just wanted to do something that was completely without structure or rules.  I wanted to put color on something without having to worry about the result.  Fortunately, a conversation with my sister-in-law pointed me in the right direction.

My sister-in-law is an artist, art instructor, and crafter.  I had been reading about Yupo and asked her if she had tried it.  Yes, she was working on a picture about it at the time.  She showed me her latest drawing and gave me some tips on working with the medium.  When I returned home, I ordered some from Amazon as my local craft store did not carry it.  Once it arrived, I could not get it out of the box fast enough.

In case you have not heard of Yupo, it is a surface for watercolor, acrylics, inks, alcohol inks, pencil, and collage.  It is not a paper in the traditional sense of manufactured paper.  This surface is made of Polypropylene.  I guess that makes it a.... plastic?  

Since this just arrived, I have only tried it with watercolors.  I would have to say that Yupo has one characteristic that makes it really great with watercolor.  Since it is a plastic, the paints are not absorbed into it.  If you do something and don't like the look of it, you can wet a paper towel and completely wipe away the paint.  Even if the paint has dried.  It has gone, back to a completely blank surface.  This is great, especially when you are just playing around with watercolor.  If you don't want to keep something, you can reuse the sheet.  I am always looking for ways to do more art for less money.  As they say, "a penny saved is a penny earned."

I have not yet used Yupo enough to know how many reuses you can get out of a sheet.  But, if it does becomes stained, you could always use it for the back support for a collage or cover the sheet with a background of acrylic paints for a new painting in that medium.  I expect a little of this will go a long way.

When I paint small pictures on a flat surface, I use a flexible plastic cutting mat to protect my work surface.  I found that dabbing a little water on the back of the Yupo sheet before laying it on the surface helped hold it in place, just as plastic wrap will hold to a damp counter top.  Then I can turn the plastic mat when I needed to change angles while I am painting.  The Yupo sheet stays in place.

One other piece of advice from my sister-in-law that I would like to pass on.  When you want to experiment, especially when you begin working with Yupo, let the picture decide what it wants to be.  Put some color on, see how the color diffuses, then decide what picture you want to paint.     Once you are more familiar with how the paint is going to act on the sheet you can start with the idea of the painting first.  She is right.  Since the paint is not sinking into the sheet it acts differently than it does on paper.  It is a great art product to work with when you just want to add a little color and see what happens.

So, I wet a sheet of Yupo and got started.  I put three dabs of paint on the wet surface and watched as they diffused.  It looked like the center of flowers, so I started adding some petals.  Then some background and leaves.  Is it a masterpiec?  No.  Was it fun and relaxing?  Yes.  And since I could just wipe the whole thing away, there was no pressure to get it right.

My second paper was an experiment to see how the paint acted when it was swirled, lifted off, erased, and painted over once it was dry.  I used bright colors.  I was not worried about a design.  I was using a Zentangle approach to this:  draw some lines (or strings as the term is in Zentangle) to create sections and then fill in the sections with shapes.  This drawing not supposed to mean anything.  It was just a way to see what happened when I did something.  However, in a way, it slightly resembles a fish looking at a can.  Whatever that means.

So that was my play day yesterday.  Fun.  Relaxing.  And totally what I needed.  I will be doing this for a few days until I am ready to start a new project.  That won't be long.  Time is moving all too quickly.    Check back on Sunday for a new blog post.