nanke's stuff

I've had a pad of Yupo (synthetic watercolor paper) for a long time, but I've never used it. It isn't really paper - it's made of 100% polypropylene. I don't know what polypropylene is, but it doesn't sound very earth friendly to me. My friend Kathy, artist extraordinaire, has been painting on Yupo for a long time, and she loves it. The thing about it is, because it's so slippery, you have very little control over the paint. Having been called somewhat of a control freak (I won't mention by whom, Michael), I've been avoiding trying it. A few weeks ago my sweetie and I were killing time in Royal Oak, having taken 1/2 hour less time than we thought to get to my son's house, and we discovered a wonderful art supply store right there on Woodward Ave (it's called Utrecht's, I think). Anyway, they had these really cute little "towers" of watercolor paints for $3 or $4 dollars. They're made by Koh-i-noor, and I couldn't resist getting them. Since I wanted to give them a go, I decided to try the Yupo, too.

I cut a piece of Yupo into 4 pieces - a whole sheet seemed too daunting to begin with, and I began to paint. Now the painting is nothing to write home about, and I didn't use anywhere near all the colors (there's 24 of them), but I found that working on the Yupo wasn't quite as difficult as I thought it would be. I couldn't help but fiddle with it, trying to gain more control than it was giving me, but now that I've tried it once, I'll try it again, I'm sure. Kathy says that if you don't like what you've done, you can just wash it off and start again. I didn't try that, but I did try to remove some paint that had gone outside the lines I had drawn to work within. While the paint came off, it stained the surface. I used plain water, then I tried Windex, which got a bit more off than just the plain water. Maybe soap would work better, but I didn't feel like getting up to try it.