Willow Pond, commissioned watercolor on Aquabord™, 5″ x 7″
I got the word that it would be extremely unlikely that the “hidden for now” painting would be seen on my blog before it was delivered to its intended recipient. The plan is to present this to the owner of the property, who is not that fond of winter! Maybe insert a little summer light into the dark days of December.
There were some people in the original photo that got removed in the interest of focusing attention on the lovely scene. There was also one cat hair that got unintentionally added–I didn’t notice it until the first coat of varnish had dried and I didn’t dare remove it for fear of lifting off paint with it. Thanks to my orange tiger cat, always trying to be a part of the action. The single cat hair is visible in this photo; if you are of the sleuthing sort you can attempt to find it.
What I do love about this photo is that it’s probably the first one out of the maybe hundred or so paintings on Aquabord™ that I’ve done that manages to show the watercolor paper-like texture of the board. It’s particularly evident in the sky, and the texture also helped me out with the reflective quality of the water. Even after all these paintings, I still find Aquabord™ to be a somewhat tricky surface to deal with but also much more forgiving than watercolor paper.
Alli Farkas Artist Adventures 
Kind of hard to find the cat hair on my iPhone! LOL! Love the texture the ground gives this piece. Bet the recipient will be warmed by the lovely image. Good job, Alli!
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I can find the cat hair on my iPhone but that’s because I know exactly where it is. Glad you like the painting. Hope its new owner will too!
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Oh how fun!!!
So, aquaboard is a textured medium to paint on?
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It’s a hardboard base similar to Masonite with a gesso surface that is textured to resemble the roughness of watercolor paper. When the painting is done I coat it with UV protective spray and a spray varnish. The huge benefits are that it doesn’t have to be framed and there is no danger of messing up the watercolor if it gets handled or anything wet drops on it. The varnish also brings up the intensity of the color the same way putting a traditional watercolor under glass in a frame does.
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OH! I didn’t even know there was such a thing! I imagine the colors become much more brilliant then. Interesting! I love most things with texture!
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Never heard of Aquaboard but I read everything you wrote about it! Is it really expensive? By the way the painting is beautiful
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I see from your blog that you are currently in Australia. Price for the 5″ x 7″ Aquabord that I use is $4.40 Australian for a pack of three boards. At least I believe it’s a 3-pack, since I’ve never seen them packaged any other way. The website didn’t specify. Anyhow, one of the advantages to Aquabord is that if you goof up you can pretty much get back to the white of the board easily except for staining colors like phthalo blue or phthalo green. So if you want to practice over and over, you can just wash the paint off–unlike with paper–and start again. Who knows, the pale colors that didn’t quite totally wash off might provide some interesting effects underneath the new coats of paint on top of them!
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Wow that’s actually pretty cool, I always just accepted my fate when I dripped lol. Lots of paintings of people with weird splotches on their face. That’s not even expensive either, so thanks for letting me know I really appreciate it 🙂
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Here are a couple of helpful links–the Ampersand link also has a bunch of national flags in the upper right hand corner and if you click on the Australian flag it will tell you where to buy the product in Australia. The other link is a tutorial about using Aquabord which I can’t recommend highly enough–if you don’t at least read this tutorial you will find yourself quite frustrated at times. The info provided will save you a lot of experimental grief!
http://ampersandart.com/aquabord.php
http://ampersandart.com/artist-karen-vernon.php
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I can’t thank you enough wow this is really useful! Seriously thank you, now I’m going to go spend all my extra money on these things lol
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I like your posts. I follow you (if you can follow me and you).
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This painting just warms me right up! Beautiful, Alli, and I love the success you are finding with the Aquabord.
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We’re getting there! If I get around to it, the next challenge with Aquabord™ will be to try painting something larger than 5″ x 7″! This painting surface really reacts differently from paper, so just because I’ve learned to paint small doesn’t mean I’ll automatically have control over large areas of wet paint…
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