In today’s class, we watched two videos:
- A field scene in Andy Evansen’s Plein Aire painting in the Cotswolds.
- A Ron Ransom video tutorial on painting skies, especially clouds
Exercise: Ron Ransom Skies
Small Bird Sheltering From Storm
I have not painted figures so much, and rather few birds, so I thought I’d give this little one a go. Some people told me this is a female goldfinch. I have no idea.
Storm Clearing at Sunrise
The point of today’s painting was more practice with water control, in particular, having too much water and using it to define the rows between the plants.
Green Vase with Peonies
Intro
Following swiftly on the heals of the previous painting, I did another. The wet-in-wet version took about 15 mintues to paint, about a half hour to dry with considerable coaxing from a hair dryer, then about 5 minutes to ink.
After than I decided to go back to a wet on dry technique, as we normally do.
Pink Flowers: Wet in Wet, and Inked
Intro
We practiced two new techniques with this painting:
- soaking paper, and applying gooey paint
- using a brush pen to ink the outlines when dry
This was huge fun, and I think I’ve found a style I really like doing. The painting is extremely fast, and the inking is fun after the painting and paper are completely dry. The tough part is it takes a long time for the paper to completely dry, even when helped along with a hair dryer.
“The Fish Shack” – copy of a painting
One of my classmates brought in a picture of a painting she saw during a vacation. It’s a painting of a fish shack, with a dock and some boats.
Continue reading ““The Fish Shack” – copy of a painting”Testing Paint Sticks
I bought a few Daniel Smith Watercolour Paint Sticks from Dick Blick, and took the class session to try them out. The colours were:
- Aureolin
- Quin Gold
- Burnt Umber
- Cobalt Blue
- Burnt Sienna
- Raw Sienna
- Quin Burnt Orange
- Sap Green
- French Ultramarine
- Permanent Alizarin Crimson
Vases with Flowers on the Patio
Today’s painting class assignment was a picture that one of the other students found that was a fairly impressionistic watercolour of some vases with flowers on a patio.
Continue reading “Vases with Flowers on the Patio”After Manet: “Flowers in a Vase”
Last week, I attended both the Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday afternoon watercolour classes, because, wow do I NEED some painting time! The assignment was a painting by Manet, “Flowers in a Vase”, which is a rather lovely impressionistic oil painting. We, of course, work in watercolour, so it’s interesting to see what we come up with.
Continue reading “After Manet: “Flowers in a Vase””“Peonies on the table” after Gregory Packard
This past week, I attended the painting class on both Tuesday and Wednesday, starting and finishing a copy of Gregory Packard‘s painting “Peonies on the table” (listing page).
This was a very fun painting to do; it reminded us very much of a Monet for its impressionistic qualities. As we were working in watercolour, the adages “work fast and loose”, “don’t think, paint”, and “get in and get out” were our guides.
Continue reading ““Peonies on the table” after Gregory Packard”