QoR Watercolor Challenge
Amy Shawley
If you haven't heard by now - there is a brand new watercolor on the market called QoR and it's being made by the wonderful folks up at Golden Artist Colors! These paints have been formulated with a new type of binder that holds more pigment than traditional watercolors, which means your colors will appear more rich and brilliant even after drying! Read all about them HERE!
As part of our Working Artist Program, our Golden Paints lectures now include a short section on these amazing paints so if you if you are a watercolorist be sure stop by and see one of us at these events for more info on QoR! My list of upcoming demos can be found on my workshops page, for a list of events run by other Working Artists, visit the Golden website!
From a painter's perspective, QoR is really quite incredible and I'm in love with how it performs. I typically incorporate watermedia techniques like washes and stains in my acrylic work, but I would not consider myself a watercolorist and have always struggled with applications like layering and lifting! It is something that I have to practice in watercolor and I've been having fun playing with QoR! The QoR paints perform the way you would expect a watercolor to - you can dilute them with water to adjust their range of intensity, they can be reanimated when dry and lifted off of absorbent surfaces, and can be used with traditional watercolor mediums. The big difference with these paints is the color - not only are the paints intense, but the color bleeds and blooms into water in ways that I haven't seen before. Also not all of the QoR colors are transparent, they range in their opacity and transparency, following the same principals as Golden Acrylic colors do in terms of their Organic vs. inorganic origins.
I've set up some QoR challenges for myself and am starting with a series of birds (big surprise there!), the first challenge was these lovely Golden Conures that I photographed at the National Aviary in Pittsburgh...
I kept the color palette pretty limited: Cadmium Yellow Primrose (for opacity), Hansa Yellow Medium and Indian Yellow (for warmth) then I mixed Van Dyke Brown and Prussian Blue for the dark values. I kept some areas looser and worked detail and thicker paint layers into others. I don't usually work with much brilliant yellow, so this was a fun challenge in terms of QoR application AND for color choice, especially on a gloomy Autumn day!
Next challenge: a Gouldian Finch!
More to come! Email me at amyshawley@gmail.com or post here if you have any questions about QoR!