Skip to main content

2nd Watercolor Class is Finished

Just finished my second watercolor class that Bobbie bought for me.  It was a class handled through the art supply company www.cheapjoes.com which is a great place to buy art supplies for really good prices.  They have 3 stores in Western North Carolina and are based out of Boone, NC.  Joe Miller (owner / artist) has a great store of how he started it all.

Back to the class.  It was hosted on Zoom, was moderate in cost ( couple of hundred bucks), lasted 3 days with 3-1/2 hours / day.  Went very well, no technical hitches and was chock full of information and examples.  I got a lot out of it.

I put a lot of stress on myself on classes.  It may come from decades of being a software engineer and getting things done fast and working.  I'm all about no stress now but the self pressure to do a new watercolor painting using colors, subject, etc. that I've not done before was tough.  My first go was on the wrong track so I canned it, but then had to re-start again.  No pressure!

The end result is the image shown here.  Whew, what a relief when I was almost done and the instructor (Alexis Lavine : an excellent artist) was pleased with what I was doing.  I felt like I had stumbled on a lucky trail.  The background was throwing me for a loop until I came up with this idea and color.  It worked.

BTW: I was the only guy in the class.  Again, no pressure.  I could fail for all the guys in the world.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Still Life

 Life is never still, at least I don't think you would want it to be.  That's why so many of us (i.e., retired care free people) travel.  Keep seeing new things and places.   Well the Hurricane so far inland was a new thing and one I would have rather forgone but life is what happens.  Life keeps moving. Except a still life is forever and captures a slice of time frozen in a painting.  This is from a wooden bowl of pears onboard our ship during dinner one nice.  Again, just thought it looked nice. Enjoy.
Post a Comment
Read more

3rd Try is a Charm

I've been trying to draw / paint these barns for a couple of years but never felt or got them right.  This time I think they turned out right. So What went wrong before and what's right now with this drawing?  This time, the light was right.  It's coming from the upper right and the shadows just looked right.  The other thing is the corn field on the left had to "be in season", otherwise it's just a plowed field.  I had taken other photos from different angles but they never felt right.  This angle has the road, power lines, corn field, etc. all leading to the right.  The shadows on the lower right helps fill in that corner (don't forget about the corners!).  The last part is trying to draw (ink paint maybe) the trees in the background.  Not so easy when they are kind of a blob is green shades. So yeah, it's composition that is king.  Many times I just don't see it until the drawing / painting is finished and when it's right it feels goo...
Post a Comment
Read more

So THIS is My Style?

 If I play around long enough my style will appear.  I'm guessing that this is kind of it.  I'll keep working on other techniques in watercolor but for now this appears to be my style. I do like it and others appear (to my face) to also like this.  Not every one of my paintings is a success.  About 1/3 so far, but when they do I am rather pleased that anything good comes out of it at all. I do love color.  Color is happy and outdoors is full of color, be it the west or back east with the greens.  Color color color. Also doing some painting on hot press paper and see how that goes. Later......
Post a Comment
Read more