New Student Art: Advanced Watercolor and Beginning Drawing

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:

Marilyn Bultemeier2

Marilyn Bultemeier3

Marilyn Bultemeier5

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:

Dennis Foote

We learned about negative space and how to look for those shapes that help to complete a drawing:

Heather Terrill3

We studied perspective:

Chris Petersen2

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.

Alison Metzger6

Sydney Salway5

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:

Heather Terrill7

Everyone worked on drawing their self portrait:

Alison Metzger7

We worked on still life in class and at home:

Sydney Salway

Chris Petersen6

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.

 

Student Art: Watercolor Portrait 2017

Tammy Enrietto

Our 2017 portrait class just ended. In this class, we studied painting parts of the subject we planned to paint the first week. Students were told they could paint figures and animal portraits as well. Everyone learned to grid their reference photo and paper to assist with proportion and likeness. They studied skin tones and laying color next to color and softening edges. They studied composition as it relates to portraiture. We also covered proper placement of eyes, nose, ears and mouth as they appear on a baby, pre-teen, teen and adult. If you would like to see examples of their work click here. Thank you to all my students who took part in this class and shared their work here.

At the Pool and a Basket Vendor

Every year the Granddaughters and I head for Jury Pool. This painting was painted from a photo I took two years ago and features the orange and green slides. I have another started that has the pool in the background with numerous little people enjoying a hot summer day poolside. No special technique was used with this painting. I did liquid frisket some of the small design areas on the bathing suits and some of the bolts on the slides.

The above painting is of a basket/hat vendor in Mexico. About ten years ago I took a trip to a resort on the coast and watched as these vendors strolled up and down the beaches looking like gigantic clumps of baskets.

I began this painting by painting monochromatically in paynes gray. I then washed in splatters of water and allowed that value painting to run, tilting the board this way and that. I did not wash any white gouache into this and just painted the scene. After that, I added two figures and a bird to create more interest. The figures and the bird are cut out of a magazine and glued on using acrylic matte medium and water mixture.