Watercolors- Wet Red Poppies

I did this one on Aquabord back in early September.  Aquabord is a kind of hard, plaster surface that you can paint directly on with watercolors.  It's not on paper, so there's no prep or stretching required.  Once you're finished, if you want to protect it you just seal it with a varnish and you can hang it.  Some come pre-attached to a mounting frame as well.  What's cool is that you can also just put the whole thing under running water, rub it a bit, and it all washes away.  Cool!  But a bit scary....

It's had to work this kind of surface aggressively, as the paint will eventually come up.  Instead, I really just dove in and did my layering smoothly and quickly.  This works very well on surface, and it doesn't muddy up at all.  In the end, a very different experience than paper, but fun!  I loved that prep wasn't required at all.  That really got me painting.

Of course, it costs much more than normal paper does, but I've got to prep so much with the normal paper that I don't paint as much as I'd like.  With this stuff, it may cost a bit more, but it seems like I might actually paint a bit more because of the lack of prep required.