Watercolor Techniques at Wyndham Art Supplies

The last few posts have been about my watercolor paintings, and I mentioned the course I took a while ago, but fail to go into detail. Well, here it is...

In May and June I took a watercolor techniques course at Wyndham Art Supplies. It was a great class. I really enjoyed the opportunity to learn how to handle this medium, as I find it is one of the more difficult ones. With acrylic, it's quite easy to just use straight out of the tube. If you make a mistake, you can go over it (in theory).

I've always liked the idea of watercolor, but I never really knew how to use it properly. I liked that Karen provided simple instructions like: Watercolor, no matter how intense the pigment, is supposed to have the consistency of...water.

The other thing I liked about the class was that while we learned techniques, we actually made finished pieces. Which is much more satisfying that having sheets and sheets of practice.

Painting the First: Aurora Borealis.
For this painting we learned about wet on wet techniques for the sky (along with a kind of paper mounting). We also learned some dry brush techniques for the tree silhouettes.

Independent watercolor

So, I just did a wonderful watercolor course at Wyndham Art Supplies and I learned TONS! It was nice to get some technical instruction, but more on the course later.

I bought a bunch of watercolor supplies for my birthday and yesterday was the first day that I did some painting on my own since the course ended, more importantly, it was a completely novel idea, not a copy of something we did in class. It was nice. It's a really small piece and it took me several hours (with all of the waiting), but it finally gave me a chance to use the silver and gold watercolors that I failed to resist in the store. Fortunately, the masking fluid (see above) resisted the washes really well (hoho) and I got a really bright silver moon and vibrant golden hare.

I've had a bit of a thing with hares lately. For a long time, I had an affinity with rabbits. No, it's not because of their breeding habits. In second year, I took part in a guided meditation for a poetry course. When we were asked to visualize an animal, I got a rabbit and it stuck. The change into a hare specifically came recently. Mostly I really REALLY like a line from Terry Pratchet's newest Tiffany Aching book "I shall Wear Midnight":

"The hare runs into the fire.
The hare runs into the fire.

The fire it takes her, she is not burned.
The fire it loves her, she is free"

There will probably be a few more peices involving hares.

Anyway, below is the finished product. It's not perfect, but I'm really quite proud of it. I painted it on this recycled cotton paper that has a really textured finish. I think it gave it a nice effect.

Colours: Indigo, prussian blue, olive green, hooker's green, veridian, pyrelene green, alizarin crimson, (to mute the greens), quinacridone gold, cadmium yellow, yellow ocher, gold and silver.