Watercolour class, second week.

Classic still life exercise! Dorothy arranged some fruit on a scarf and got us to paint it. She also provided a tracing of a photo that she'd taken of a fruit arrangement, for those students who felt unable to sketch the fruit before painting them. There were only two of us that didn't use the tracing; I'd done this sort of drawing so often, I felt confident enough to draw the fruit in front of us. I felt the pull of my previous workshop training in acrylics; tempted to use the watercolour from the tube without diluting it, so my colour is very strong instead of being muted and more subtle as watercolour should be. Hopefully at the end of the course I will have re-learned my painting technique! We will continue working on this painting next week, to do the background and finish the fruit.

I did this when I got home - taken from a small water colour picture I had. I plan to use the same sketch to make three more - but of different seasons.

Watercolour classes.

I have enrolled in an 8 week water colour class, and have enjoyed the first two weeks. Our tutor (Dorothy Fields) is an accomplished artist and excellent teacher. She explains the lesson to the students, shows us how to do it, and then gets us to do it one step at a time. The first week she talked about the properties of watercolour paint, the best type of paper to use, how to wet and stretch the paper, the right brushes and how to look after them. Very comprehensive. Then she taught us three ways of doing water colour washes.
When we'd done those, she asked us to paint something over the washes.  I chose to paint pyramids over my blue wash, sand and sea over another, and a simple tree over the fourth wash.

After we'd done those, Dorothy said to 'do our own thing' with a wash background and something over the top, so with the July Sketchbook Challenge in mind ('circles') I painted these balls and circles. Doesn't represent anything - just painted doodles I guess!