Student Art: Spring 2019

Kari Zeplin6

Diane Winningham

Joe Isca4

Bill Lambert5

The above paintings are from our Exploring Watercolor class. These artists learn the basics about watercolor. They learn how to create colorful darks and value differences. They learn how to recognize differences in value and that it is always better to allow the water to help them create. Basic color combinations are discussed and practiced. They learn to use a sponge, masking fluid,  a magic eraser, salt, make a rubber band brush for grasses, and how to soften an edge with their brush. They practice skies and water and trees and buildings. They take watercolor magazines home with them, each week, so they can see all the different ways artists use watercolor. This is the class that starts it all. If .ou would like to see all of their incredible work, click here.

Mary Ann Berron3

Kathy Cron4

Masa Paper Painting

Laura Nellum

Ink and Watercolor Painting

Linda Gerbers3

Joyce Racine4

Rachel Peterson3

Gouache Resist

Jennifer Hope

Tammy Enrietto

Watercolor and Collage

The above paintings were completed in a class titled Watercolor Plus. It is probably the most creative as well as the most demanding watercolor class that I teach. I pretty much teach different techniques for the use of other media in watercolor. The artists select the things they want to try. I am so pleased with the results in this class that you must visit their gallery page by clicking here. These artists worked with masa paper, gesso and watercolor, gouache resist and watercolor, many different forms of waterproof black ink and watercolor, elegant writer, citrasolv collage and watercolor and rice paper and watercolor. High praise for the work you all did!!!!

Nancy Longmate

Sue Joseph6

Janet Heffley4

The above paintings were completed in the Advanced Watercolor Class. This class is designed to be a class where artists, who have completed all the other classes, may come and work together on paintings of their own choice. They must complete at least 3 paintings in the 6 week period. I am available as a mentor as well as them helping each other. They have a sharing time at the end of each class session. If you would like to see all of their work this period click here.

Henn Laidroo

HAVE A GREAT SUMMER BREAK!

Students’ Watercolor Portraits

Every fall we begin our watercolor classes with a portrait class.

Ruth Karau

Dianna Burt3

We painted people portraiture.

Beth Akey5

Cindy Guzik

We painted animal portraits.

Marilyn Bultemeier

Janet Heffley

We grunged backgrounds and painted portraits right on that grunged paper.

Discussions included facial features, skin tones and color theory, composition as it relates to portraiture, and two ways to approach a portrait in watercolor.

If you would like to see all the examples of portraits painted by these artists click here or scroll to the top of the blog and click on the page labeled Student Art: Watercolor Portrait 2016.

Thank you to all my students who share their work here!

Two portraits on a Grunge Background

 

I don’t know why I like working on a background that has marks on it already. The above two paintings were drawn and created on watercolor paper that I had “grunged” with coffee, ink, and applied gesso to in advance. Here is a post that describes the process.

It is not just the challenge of working on a surface that has been disturbed that I find interesting. It is examining the marks and finding a subject that they work with or discovering new ways of working with or around abstract marks. It is seeing that all these marks can increase the feeling of depth in some paintings.

The top painting is Teddy, my dog. The bottom one is a self portrait.

Three Paintings; One Post

The above painting required some planning. I had a photographic reference sent to me from my daughter of this cat laying on his back, his favorite pose. I tried to lay it out and come up with some way to paint him that might be interesting, other than just him in paint. I finally decided on using another reference photo where there were a large assortment of overlapping grasses and combined the two. I also decided to use a sheet of masa paper to enhance the texture and maybe create more interest. I have a tutorial on how to prepare and use masa paper with watercolor here.

The above is my take on a lunar landscape.

The above painting is a gouache resist. I was attempting to create a composition using shapes. I describe how to create a gouache resist here.

Watercolor Portrait: Fall 2015

We just completed our yearly Watercolor Portrait Class! These artists are just amazing me with their paintings. Every single one of them just keep improving with each year that goes by.

Laura Lyndsay3

We began the class by studying and painting parts of portraits. We discussed what things on a face define the likeness of someone. Some practiced hands, too!

Leslie Vrchota

The next week, we discussed the general measurements of a head and the facial features. We learned to crop a photo and measure the format of our watercolor paper to be dimensionally correct to the reference. We then learned to grid each of them to help us get accurate proportions to our drawings and paintings.

Roxanne Yoquelet

Some artists included animal portraiture.

Kathy Smierciak

We discussed composition and where our center of interest could be located and cropped our photo appropriately. We talked about value and how we needed contrast. Some artists included figurative work.

John Kelty3

We learned how to paint little people because we have a landscape class coming up and are thinking we might like to work toward including figures in our landscapes.

I was most impressed, however, with the night we explored creating a grunge background and then painted a portrait onto that background.

Beth Akey

Diana Ringer3

Laura Lyndsay

Nancy Longmate2

Any of the above paintings can be enlarged by clicking on them.

There are 62 works of art, right now, on the student Portrait page. You can access them by scrolling to the top of this post and clicking on Student Art: Watercolor Portrait 2015 or by clicking here.

Thank you, again, to all the artists who share their work here!

Elegant Writer: Payton

This one makes me chuckle. This is my little dog, Payton. He is FIFTEEN!!!  I had fun with this painting and let it sit and sit for the longest time. I wanted to add more…. and more… and more, so it just sat. I finally decided that everything I wanted to add was not in how he looked but who he is and I hope I captured enough of him that you know what I mean when I say this falls short. Many of you share your homes with pets that are dear for all sorts of reasons.  Pictures and words just fall a bit short.  So, I decided this was finished.

So you could see how I added the watercolor, this is my initial drawing and wash with the Elegant Writer:

This pen will become part of the tools I use in the future.  Here was my tutorial on how the Elegant Writer can be used.

Elegant Writer: Abner

This is Abner, my daughter’s beloved weimaraner. I keep returning to a reference photo I took of him quite a few years back. There are many versions of him within this blog. I seem to gravitate to this image when I am trying new techniques. This is my attempt with the “Elegant Writer”.

This is what I came up with following my initial drawing and wetting of the ink lines. I felt I did not achieve enough darks. I went back in a second time and re-inked the lines where I wanted the image to appear darker.

After re-inking the drawing, I re-activated those lines with a brush and water and came up with the above.  I think an artist could keep going and developing the ink drawing if they are not anticipating painting with watercolor. I have yet to experiment with this technique and collage, wax resist or some of the other things I create with, but am convinced it is a very versatile medium.

Hope you give it a try!

The Red Boots

 

I began this painting several months ago. I guess I was anticipating summer and warm weather. I wanted to challenge myself to see if I could render these Victorian beauties in some way. I do not consider myself very good at drawing and painting buildings. One thing I know I do not do enough is insert little people or animals into my landscapes. I get so caught up in the “thinking” part of putting landscapes together that I never include a story; and I like stories so much better! I used two separate reference photos to come up with the neighborhood and another for the “little cowgirl”. I made up the older person at the top of the stairs and modeled the dog’s form after the boxer who lives across the street from me. I can remember a time when those red boots and hat would have been my prize possessions, not to mention a man’s best friend to spend the summer with!

Little People are fun to paint. Here are a couple sketches to ad to the mix:

 

Ink and Watercolor: Curly Dog

  This is another ink and watercolor. I used frisket and inked lines with a #4 round brush this time, prior to spritzing it with water as in the elephant. After all that dried, I washed in the colors. I then removed the friskit and went back in with watercolor and ink. The last thing I did was splatter with a small rigger. Thank you to wet canvas for the beautiful reference image of this dog.

Student Art: Learning to Draw

Anna Bell4

We began this drawing class by learning to “see”, drawing objects, blindly, with what is called blind continuous line. We, then, drew continuous line drawings while looking, paying careful attention to the cross contours in our subject material.

Todd Dunn2

We studied negative space and began to recognize when we could use the shape and space behind an object to help us describe the subject.

Alan Pareis3

The students worked very hard to begin to see perspective and to measure the angles of lines with their pencils. They used a corner of a room as their subject.

Vanessa Fankhauser4

During the fourth week, they cut photos in strips and practiced laying in three values. They worked from black and white as well as color photos to do this.

Alan Pareis2

They studied the values they saw in a glass, still life study.

Myrna Nelson4

They learned to grid a photograph and measure and enlarge that photograph by creating a proportionate grid on their drawing paper.

Todd Dunn

They studied drawing their self portraits. If you wish to view a larger selection of their drawings you can find them by clicking here or by scrolling to the top of the page and clicking on the small label Student Art: Beginning Drawing.  If you click on each drawing, they will enlarge. Thank you to all the fine artists who took this class!