Happy New Year and a new watercolor painting of a Hollyhock on Textured Claybord

At first I want to wish you all a very HAPPY NEW YEAR 2008.

I have started the new year with a new watercolor painting. In the past time there has changed a lot in my thinking how I want to do my watercolors. For the past years I always loved to paint on hotpressed paper but it is time now to change something. I must figure out what pleases me most and what fits the best to my own painting style.
With this in mind I have tried to paint again on coldpressed watercolor paper. This paper has a nice texture and I must say the first day I did not get the hang of it and threw the started painting away. But I didn’t want to give up so fast and tried it again. I changed a bit of my technique and it seems that this works for me.
At this time I am doing a figurative one on coldpressed paper.

Beside this I wanted to do a flower and I still have some Textured Clayboard. I have worked on Textured Clayboard some time ago, but never really liked it, because it did not fit my way of painting technique. Since I have changed something in my technique with the coldpressed paper I was curious how it would be NOW with the clayboard. And I must say I LOVED it. I loved so much working on it, it was more than easy. It was so easy to lift colours and to get the white back.

Pink Hollyhock, 11″x14″,

I was able to paint this hollyhock in a short time and I really like the result. I will do another floral on this claybord – I will post this very soon.