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| Lunch with fellow artists |
Hi All,
I may have mentioned that I am co-chair of the Art Club workshop committee which presented a three day watercolor workshop with Janet Rogers. We had her hubby Steve Rogers last year. Both are outstanding artists and teachers, she left the students asking for a five day return workshop for next year.
It was a sold out event and well worth the time to learn from Janet. My watercolor paintings had taken a sorrowful showing but now I am recharged to buy new limited palette wc paints. Cheap Joe will love me.
Summarizing what I learned:
1. Don't be so cheap, buy new paint and put out a big blob of it onto a large palette.
2. If I use a limited palette I will avoid mud which haunts my artistic endeavors.
Aureolin Yellow, Permanent Rose & Cobalt Blue for the transparent triad of colors.
3. Practice(warm up) before each painting by doing swatches of flesh tones & gesture drawings.
4. Make the secondary orange, purple and green from limited palette triad.
5. After sketching flower, face or figure drop in a puddle of flesh tone then add other colors to create a variety of subtle color changes. One straight color is boring.
6. A second triad was made by using; Qin. Gold, Alizarin Crimson & Ultra. Blue.
7. Use white of the paper for the highlights of the subject and use the cooled down flesh tone for the shadow areas. That was new to me.
8. Never use blue as the shadow color; they should be a warm color.
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| Flesh tone swatches. |
Here are my first attempts:
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| Grand daughter as an angel. |
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| Flowers |
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| Grand daughter on the beach. |
As you can see I am bad at flowers but do enjoy figures and faces. I was amazed at how many times Janet could add another color to "overwhelm" a mistake in color. As long as the puddle is still wet, all the colors are transparent and from a limited palette. I don't fear watercolors as much as I used to and I'm even fired up to paint with them.
