Torrance students the
previous posts will give you the information that was covered in class and what
will be covered in the next sessions.
PV
Class, even though we have basically finished with our class project, one of my
Torrance students asked why she couldn’t paint the tree color in first. A good
question and the answer is “Yes, you can.” It isn’t going to get you out of
having to negative paint the dark background in but if you want to intensify
the yellow and oranges of the trees and make a rough shape of the tree first it
is perfectly okay to do so, just remember to let the tree dry before adding the
dark next to it or you will get bleeds and back runs into your light area. You
can use the dark to shape your tree better, just be careful it can get to
feeling so good, next thing you know there are no leaves left on your tree.
Since
we have finished the project, I like to do request demos so I can address
specific needs of students as they start their own projects and they experiment
with different techniques. This past class was a question about a rose that was
done on the cover of a Cheap Joe’s catalog. To a novice when looking at someone
else’s painting it can look very confusing and overwhelming, however, as you
learn more and more about watercolor you will be able to look at paintings and
figure out just how they accomplished their work.
The rose in question was done very wet into wet but it was done in sections. If you
want to be a good watercolorist, you will need to brush up on your drawing
skills because a good painting comes from a good drawing and in this case it
was a fairly detailed line drawing. You need the detail to know where each
element (petal) is on the flower. This is the same for the rose, which is a
complicated flower, or a poppy or daisies, which are simpler flowers because
you need to know where you are going to paint.
You
paint in sections and you skip around so that you aren’t painting next to a wet
section. You can start out by painting the area with water first, in this case
a single petal. While the area is still wet, you add in your colors and you let
the watercolor do its thing. Add two or more colors into an area and let them
blend naturally, you can guide the color by putting it in one part of the area
or another but let the mixing happen when the 2 colors meet on the pre-wet
paper. Find a new space away from the one you just painted and repeat the
process on each petal and stem until you have worked your way around the rose.
This
is a very loose and free way to paint and one of the things I love about
watercolor, if you don’t fight it watercolor will do some amazing things on its
own, but remember, if you fight the watercolor, the watercolor will win. See
you all in class.
