
Darlene Lucas demonstrating more of her extensive techniques at the DANIEL SMITH Store in Seattle
Today’s FREE demo at DANIEL SMITH Seattle Store was with Darlene Lucas showing everyone her many ways of painting using watercolor paints’ unique qualities of transparency , and granulation as her first layer. Then she incorporates many other different art materials into her paintings. Everyone who attended today’s demo learned multiple ways to creatively paint.
Darlene told us that painting on
Ampersand Claybord is currently her passion because its’ surface allows her a lot of freedom to work in many different ways. She likes the smooth surface, it’s like
hot press watercolor paper, and it has a durable surface that she can manipulate to express her ideas. She will also sometimes use the more traditional for watercolor,
Ampersand Aquabord with its’ more textured surface

Darlene Lucas explaining some of her techniques that she uses in her paintings at the DANIEL SMITH Free demo
She incorporates not only watercolor paint, but adds collage elements with decorative paper , rice paper, bits of watercolor painting cut up and ”pasted” to the surface with Matte Medium and occasionally pressed leaves or flowers. She also will scratch into the Claybord surface with different tools which causes the watercolor to collect in the crevices and she will scratch into dried paint to expose the white of the claybord for other effects. Darlene showed us how she might add depth and different interest by adding Molding Paste, both light and regular depending on the effects she wants.
Because Darlene’s art is about layering, the watercolor is the base to which she adds the other layers and acrylic paint. Watercolor has luminous qualities and dries with wonderful effects that enriches her paintings in ways acrylic paint cannot. When she is done with her watercolor, she sprays it with fixative to prevent the watercolor from dissolving or running when other wet applications are added. She may go back and add another layer of watercolor and sprays it again to “lock” the color. Darlene told me that she sometimes mixes her watercolor with
acrylic paint (or
acrylic medium ) to get watercolor effects with arcylics’ permanence.
When Darlene begins a painting she wants’ to know “what is my concept?” Darlene told us that she is currently very interested in Astronomy, the cosmos, atomic particles and more, and finds inspiration when she reads about them. One sentence that inspired her for today’s’ demo is; “…a particle can take on mixtures of velocities…” and she applied that as her concept for the painting using flowers as the subject. Okay, I don’t really understand how she does it, but Darlene makes it all come together as Her Art Expression!
A partial outline of how Darlene works begins with sketches she made of her concept, does value studies, then using transfer paper, transfers it to her claybord, preserves her “white” with
Masquepen, perhaps adds rice paper or other paper, perhaps scratches into the surface, does her watercolor under-painting, (the order of these changes depending on the painting) sprays fixative, then begins adding her acrylic paint. Darlene then may repeat different steps to develop the painting. At the beginning of the demo Darlene answered a question about working from her sketches:
“…then at a certain point I set aside my sketch,
and go where my painting tells me to go.”
Darlene also told us about the importance of “good junk” (everyone laughed at that!) to see what kinds of effects you can get, she likes to play and experiment with using lots of different things to see what kind of visual effects she can get.
At the end of the demo, Darlene left us with a few more tips:
- She has found that laminating her copy of the DANIEL SMITH Extra Fine Watercolors chart helps her with selecting the watercolors for a particular painting and a good reference for knowing the transparency and granulation characteristics of the different colors.
- And Darlene told us that she punches 3 holes in the DANIEL SMITH Catalogs to keep them in a binder, and said:
you learn so much!”
Thank you Darlene!
Every Day, Express Yourself with ART….
~Deborah Burns