PROGRAM - APRIL 3, 2019 - TOM SORRELL
Our club was most fortunate to welcome Tom Sorrell. Tom demonstrated his noted expertise with yupo. As a relatively new watercolor paper, many of us may not have had the chance to work with yupo, a synthetic paper with its plastic coating on both sides. Because of this, results can be even more exciting than with our tried and true watercolor papers.
Tom's resume is most impressive. He received his PhD from Stanford University and was a chemistry professor for 30 years at North Carolina-Chapel Hill where he published numerous research papers and textbooks. He was named an Alfredo P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellow in 1985-87.
It was not until Tom retired that he pursued his childhood passion with watercolor. After dozens of workshops with prominent watercolorists, Tom's work now hangs among many prominent exhibitions. He served as president of the Toledo Artists' Club from 2009 through 2013. He is also a signature member of the Ohio Watercolor Society.
Viewing Tom's yupo paintings one would normally think, due to the surface, he would paint flat. Many of us were surprised when he propped his yupo up on an easel.
Always creating a value study first, he started painting the sky with the perfect amount of water, wiping a runaway drip here and there.
He prefers Black Velvet natural hair brushes. He claims that transparent watercolor paint behaves less predictably on the slick surface of yupo. The arbitrary and uncontrolled mixing gives a liveliness to your painting, yet the application of paint in a controlled fashion can be achieved to create hard edges and generate luminous hues by overlapping color washes.
Tom answered many questions with grace and humor. We are all ready to try the yupo experience.
