No Substitutions

While doing some holiday baking, I ran out of my McCormick’s Vanilla Extract.  I borrowed a neighbor’s ‘store brand’ and finished my recipe, but something wasn’t right.  The taste was off.  No one else seemed to notice, but I did. 

I had a similar experience on my Artist’s Journey when I tried out my new Daniel Smith Watercolor Ground.  While it created a water-friendly surface on my canvas, something just wasn’t right.  One of the things I love about working with watercolor is the unpredictable way it moves around the hills and valleys on the rough surface of the paper.  With the smooth surface my watercolor ground created, the paint behaved differently.  It didn’t have its usual effortless flow, and the finished piece just didn’t read as ‘watercolor’.

Sometimes substitutions work–other times they don’t.  From now on, I’ll let my watercolors play on paper and reserve my canvases for acrylics.  I want all of my supplies to be happy travelers as we journey together into 2013.  I wish you all calm seas, open roads, and serene skies in the coming year.

“Recess”  Watercolor on canvas prepped with watercolor ground