you know, it's yupo!

A few days ago I finally caved in and bought a pad of Yupo paper.

Since I've been hearing great things about it for the past 3 years or so, I figured it was probably time to go ahead and give it a try.

And you know? It was rather exciting!

It took me a while to get the hang of it, so I just played around at first. Since it's made of synthetic material, it doesn't absorb moisture like watercolor paper, so the paint dries in all sorts of lovely little rainbow puddles.

Then after it's dry you can actually scrape it away (sort of like a scratchboard), like I did on the bird's tail.

Or, you can wet a cloth and completely wipe away an entire section:

(It was pretty splendid to be able to make such a clean line whilst using watercolors!)

For the final exciting challenge, I decided to paint two identical cat-ladies, one on Yupo paper and one on regular watercolor paper.

Can you tell which is which?

okay, well, I guess it's kinda obvious that the yupo-cat-lady is in the wiped-off area... but still... :)

At first I was completely convinced that I preferred the regular watercolor paper version... but now I'm not so sure.

Yupo is a lot smearier, but there's something so alluring about all those puddles...