I just completed two more classes this week. The first to finish up is a new class offering. It is titled Advanced Watercolor and is open to students who have taken all of the other watercolor classes that are offered at least once. Each student is given goal sheets to complete on each painting. They are to set a goal to complete 3 paintings in the six week period. Many of these students have already been completing a painting a week. This offers them more time to work on larger works or works that are more involved or have mixed media techniques that require more time. There are no specific assignments and the artist can explore techniques they have already learned or new ones. There is a sharing session and group critique at the end of each class session. I am there to mentor, answer questions, or demonstrate when a student needs to see a technique done again. Some students work beyond my expertise and I am just there to encourage.
One student, in this session, made a book of watercolor portraits of witches. Below are some of the witches she included in her book:
Some students worked on painting using negative space, Some used collage in their work while another experimented with painting on watercolor canvas. One student chose to study rock and water and how to best paint them. Another student is writing and illustrating a children’s book and yet another did a gouache resist. If you would like to view all 40 of their paintings click here.
The other class that ended was Beginning Drawing.
We began by drawing in continuous line both blind and looking. I spoke of cross contours in their work and how they should be included to show the shape of objects.
Here is a self portrait using blind continuous line and cross contour:
We learned about negative space and how to look for those shapes that help to complete a drawing:
We studied perspective:
We learned about value and making different marks to create interest in our drawings. We practiced value by studying the value changes in a set of photographed eyes and also by cutting a picture in different shapes. This helped to get our mind off of drawing a complete drawing at once while we practiced making value marks.
We gridded photos and learned how to enlarge the photo on our drawing paper so that it would have the right proportions to grid properly:
Everyone worked on drawing their self portrait:
We worked on still life in class and at home:
If you would like to view all their drawings click here.
Thank you to all the students who continue to allow me to post their work here.