Another Painting Class

During the summer, I signed up for a watercolor class at our local arts center. I have been missing the pleasure of painting, and I felt I'd like to brush up on some basics. Unfortunately, the regular instructor was unavailable, and the substitute she sent was under the mistaken impression we were all advanced students not needing any real instructions. In truth, the class was advertised as beginner to intermediate, and, indeed, about have of our 20 or so classmates had never done any watercolor at all. The instructor was forced to make some significant changes to her teaching plans.

I didn't learn a great deal in this class. But the upside is that it got me painting again. I got all my materials out and looked at what I had and got past that thinking of "it's just too much trouble -- I'll do it another time."

So, for my own benefit, here's a little of what I painted.

Some practice in perspective, light and shadows and creating 3D forms. I'm very bad at this. And it's hard to do in watercolor because sometimes you want a dry dark color and it runs away a bit.

The teacher wanted us to paint from our own photos and not violate any copyrights, so I did this one of a Black-headed Grosbeak in my yard. When viewed small, it looks pretty good. But it's about 6"x8" and is actually pretty rough. I worked on it a lot and finally called it done.

 Finally, I chose a scene from the Antelope Island causeway. I wanted to take on the difficult challenge of clouds. In watercolor, you leave white space as white--you don't paint it. In oils and acrylics, you can use white paint. Somehow, it's very hard for me to paint clouds in watercolor. So I spent the rest of the weeks of class working on this. I know I ruined some parts and maybe overworked it. But again, I finally had to say, done!

So there it is, my return to watercolor. I'm not really proud of the work I've done. But feel good to have begun again. I've chosen a few more subjects I want to paint. Once I have Thanksgiving dinner behind me, I will drag out the paints again and set up on my kitchen island.

Oops, almost forgot this one. On the first day of class, I was so disappointed at having no instruction and no direction, I went home determined to paint something anyway. The first thing I saw was a cute Mexican serving dish I keep on my kitchen island. It shows no skill or technique, but at least my grandkids recognized it right away.