My latest round of Wednesday Watercolor classes have started. But this week, I was the teacher.
It's hard to paint while you're teaching! Fortunately, I took the class again on Saturday and had more time to sit and paint at leisure. I continued at home adding quite a bit of line work, punching up the values and making the painting much more dramatic.
It was a fun class, but I'm looking forward to having the real teacher back and just becoming one of the students again.
It's hard to paint while you're teaching! Fortunately, I took the class again on Saturday and had more time to sit and paint at leisure. I continued at home adding quite a bit of line work, punching up the values and making the painting much more dramatic.
My usual teacher, Kathy Delumpa Allegri, needed to go in for some treatments, so I was her stand in--she was missed!
The lesson was in Line and Wash (i.e. drawing with a pigment ink pen either before or after laying down washes of watercolor). We all brought in leaves and chose three to use for a still life. Or at least the students did. I found myself walking around and showing how strokes were made, and the differences between a regular pen and a brush pen, so most of the time, I was just making my leaves up in my head.
These are the examples I did in class, using a brush pen for the lines (I used a Pigma Micron .03 for the painting above).
I was emphasizing how this was a great lesson to help you loosen up in your painting, because you don't have to follow the lines (and in fact, you are encouraged not to!).
Also emphasized was the use of three--three leaves, three sizes, three colors and three values, as well as exploring hatching, cross hatching, squirkling, and rendering (removing graphite with an eraser to get your lines or highlights).
It was a fun class, but I'm looking forward to having the real teacher back and just becoming one of the students again.
I am always interested to see your watercolors and to hear what happens in your classes, because this is something that I've spent time and money on in the past, but I've been pretty disappointed in the classes that are offered here in Nashville. There never seems to be a real plan or any real instruction or guidance, only a look at some of the flashier things like using salt or whatever. Congrats on teaching! Your paintings are beautiful!
ReplyDeleteThank you! My teacher Kathy really covers many aspects of painting, though not all of them each time around. You can tell she's good because most of her students keep coming back, class after class.
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