Category: Watercolor courses

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Quarantine 2020

Pears

COVID 19 quarantine 2020 is over forty days old for most Americans and as an artist I’ve tried working harder and using the time to hone my skills. Interestingly I see where many artists find that with all that time on their hands they feel less like painting.

We began our COVID 19 quarantine back in March when our Archbishop directed that we limit services to no more than 10 people in the church at one time. It came at about the same time as President Trump and the US Centers for Disease Control recommended gatherings be kept to less than 10 people. Continue reading “Quarantine 2020”

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Student Art Show

2020 Art Guild Entries

Well, it finally happened. I’m about to enter into my first Art Show. Yes that’s right, I’m entering the 10th Annual Student Art Show sponsored by the Fredericksburg Art Guild. The show runs from 6 February 2020 to 1 March 2020 and will be held at the Art Guild located at 308 E. Austin in Fredericksburg, TX.

OK, so now that I’ve gotten that out of the way let’s look at what I’ve been up to over the past month. As you can see my last post was in early December of 2019 and like all of you we had a busy holiday season and things are finally starting to slow down a bit. Continue reading “Student Art Show”

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Putzing with Portraits

We R Tacoma

This past week I spent putzing with portraits. If you’ve followed along on my posts you’ve seen a couple of my previous posts where I’ve attempted to draw or paint a portrait.

One of the first I did was back in 2017 from a selfie Ilene and I took while attending a Tacoma Rainier’s game. The photo really doesn’t do it justice as the skin tones are a bit off here but on the actual painting they look just fine.

Fr Methodios & His Hat

I’ve also done some pen & ink sketches over the past couple years and been OK with them. Either way, painting or pen & ink you’ll see a trend and that’s where they are pretty much caricatures rather than more realistic renditions.

That all changed this past week when I discovered a workshop on Skillshare  about portraits by Sade J. So I rolled up my sleeves, pulled out a couple of shades of watercolor and gouache and below are the results.

Continue reading “Putzing with Portraits”

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I’m Awash in Wash

Foggy Sunrise

When I say I’m awash in wash it means I’m concentrating on washes this past week. Inspired by a young lady I stumbled across on Instagram, Danielle Lanslots, I’ve been experimenting with some new colors and wash techniques.

Danielle pretty much works in landscapes and I LOVE her simple but striking style. I’m seeing the paintings she’s done and asking myself, “How can I adapt this type of wash to my paintings and sketches?” After watching her video about washes I made my first attempt and you can see the results on  Foggy Sunrise.
Continue reading “I’m Awash in Wash”

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Sky Studies

One of Two-Wet on Wet vs Wet on Dry

This week I spent some time working on sky studies. Clouds and sunsets, colors and techniques to improve my landscapes.

Prompted by World Watercolor Month for clouds last week, I decided to spend more time getting to know skies a bit more. After all, I’ve spent a lot of time up there and I certainly have seen some beautiful skies.

Two of two Wet-on-Dry

Steve Mitchell, The Mind of Watercolor, had a good tutorial on clouds the other day working in both wet-on-wet and wet-on-dry techniques. As you can see in these to photographs each has its own merits depending upon the affect I’m trying to achieve. Naturally I didn’t want to waste the paint and time so what do we to with two cloud/sky studies? We add a landscape of course!

Continue reading “Sky Studies”

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Quantity-Quality-Or Both

Photo and work in progress

Is quantity, quality, or is both that are important when it comes to learning to paint with watercolor or sketch with pen & ink?

Learning a craft is much like playing a sport—to get good at it, one must practice, practice, and practice some more. Sports legends like Michael Jordan, Tom Brady, and Tiger Woods spent hours, days, and years practicing their sport to get to the level they have all achieved. Continue reading “Quantity-Quality-Or Both”

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Painting with Kateri

The first art “lesson” I purchased was through The Great Courses program. Taught by Kateri Ewing, her course gave me a good foundation on color, value, and techniques for learning to paint with what many believe to be one of the toughest art mediums—watercolor.

A fun thing she does in the class is show several ways to add “texture” to watercolor paintings. In this case she had us swab several colors on paper then sprinkle table salt and water on the collective colors. Continue reading “Painting with Kateri”