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Author: Carly_Clements, Contributing Editor
A couple of months ago I took a watercolor workshop in painting on yupo paper and immediately fell in love with it. Yupo is not a paper at all in the traditional sense - it's actually a sheet of plastic. It has become popular in the past few years as more and more watercolorists experiment with it. You can expect surprises with yupo. For one thing, the surface is resistent to water! Watercolor flows across it and you can create lovely abstract patterns and translucent colors by tilting the paper and allowing the colors to flow and mingle. Even rich, bold color can easily be removed from yupo with the swipe of a damp brush! I hope you will paint along with this demonstration and experience that magic for yourself. Let's get started! What you'll need: Yupo comes in several weights: light, medium and heavy. For this demo I used medium weight, size 20x26. Stick your yupo to your board using small pieces of masking, or artists', tape. You could tape underneath at the corners. If you tape on top, you'll need to paint those spots when the tape is removed. I did a quick, very minimal pencil sketch on my yupo. This was just to see where things should go not give detail to the painting. Unless you use a heavy line, the pencil will not be visible after paint is applied. |
 | Mix up some puddles of paint on your palette for the background. I used only two colors - cobalt blue and thio indigo violet (Winsor Newton) - but you could add other colors. |
Using my large flat brush I swept the color into the background around the flowers. I kept my board flat so the paint flowed into the center of the brushstrokes. |  |
 | I covered this area with paint quite quickly not worrying about background or flower shapes at this stage. The details come later and, with yupo, it's easy to change any shapes you're not happy with. Notice how the paint changes as it dries. |
| Once you have some color on the background, pick up your board, with a hand on either side, and tip it from side to side. (Since I had to use one hand to take the photo, I propped my support on the table edge for tipping, but I use both hands otherwise.) As you tilt the board the paint will flow and mingle - this is one of my favorite parts of the entire painting process! |  |
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