Advanced group - session #02

This year, for this group we have a different setup of the workshop: 2 sessions x 2 hours each dedicated to one painting/subject. I usually bring a few reference photos of a certain subject and we try to get into some composition issues first - each lady has to decide about the center of interest, combine 2 or more photos, add a real-life object to the composition, remove something from the photos, etc.
The next step is dedicated to draw the major shapes/lines on transfer paper and get the drawing onto the 11x14 inches paper (we only work from this size and up with this group). The ideal would be that each attendant would also manage to get into 1-2 color studies to decide on the palette, but so far none has achieved this step yet. But we have more many sessions to come this year, and I hope I will convince them on the importance of this step by the end of the workshop.
Our first set of photos was picturing still-life of fruits and vegetables: one photo had figs on a plate, while the second one had tomatoes on a plate. The main aspect of this one was to get rid of the rather non-interesting backgrounds, and eventually make some small changes to the composition (i.e. remove some of the figs). I do not have photos of the final paintings, but only a few from our activities. I have to ask the ladies to bring all their paintings in one of our next sessions to have them photographed.

2nd Session beginners

Some of you were wondering if for any reasons our workshop has stopped, and I did realize that due to my job and other life issues I have quite some time to post anything about how we are doing.
We did not stop, we are meeting as scheduled, every Friday with the beginner group and every second Friday with the advanced group. Just that I didn't manage to take photos at every session, but I will try to catch up with the blog posts during the following days.
As the lessons are following a similar pattern as the previous year, it is not really needed to explain much about what we do, but just a very short note: monochrome color study, graded washes and value study. Our first little painting was again a seascape study. Here are a few snapshots with the ladies in action.

1st Watercolor Workshop Session, both beginners and advanced groups

Today we started the Watercolor Workshop for Seniors, both beginners and advanced groups, at the Community Center (2nd ΚΑΠΗ) of Patras city. This was our second meeting for the new "academic" year (2015-2016), as we met previous week to establish some of the administrative issues and get to know each other and our expectations. The beginners group has now already 7 attendants, although we were supposed to start only with 5. And we are waiting for one more to come next week. This makes it more difficult to come around with the materials coverage, but I am confident we will manage. As for the advanced group, I am very happy to say that all 7 ladies that followed the courses previous year joined me again this year! This makes me believe that I did something right previous year, and their excitement and joy to start again means a lot to me. In the advanced group we have one more lady, who is actually following also the beginners lessons, as she has already some drawing and acrylics experience. But she needs to catch up with the basics on watercolors.
So, what we did today?
Beginners: introduction to the watercolor media, materials needed, properties of the watercolor paints, first steps to handle the medium and the brush and paper. We did a small study of color intensity with 5 steps and a "flat wash" to get used to how the color reacts on paper. And that was pretty much what we covered within the one hour of lesson. I hope the next session, with an actual little painting (a seascape study) will be more exciting for the group.
Advanced: a fast pass through the basic watercolor techniques (color value, flat wash, graded wash, dry-on-dry, wet-on-wet, masking fluid, mixing colors on paper); a bit of composition theory and discussion about what a "reference photo" means and how we use it; selection of the photo and a pencil study on the composition; drawing on the transfer paper and transfer of the drawing to the watercolor paper. For the first painting of this year we actually had two reference photos to chose from, one with tomatoes and one with figs.
That would be the update of today, and unfortunately no photos. Next time I hope I get the camera with me.

2nd Year Workshop Announcement

I am very happy to inform you that the workshop for seniors will be held again at the Community Center (only at the 2nd ΚΑΠΗ) in Patras. The excellent news of this year workshop is that we are going to have two groups: (i) a new beginner group of 5 - 7 attendants that will follow the previous year schedule of weekly 1 hour sessions, starting with the 1st of October 2015 and until middle June of 2016, and (ii) a group of 7 advanced attendants, where we need to concentrate more hours in one session and we are going to work in bi-monthly sessions of 2-3 hours.
Furthermore, it seems that we convinced some of the responsible people with our determination and work previous year, and the Community Center managed to get involved more, and buy some of the materials needed: 2 packs of 10 sheets of Arches 90 lb CP watercolor paper, 5 sets of 3 brushes, 5 sets of 3 drawing pencils (B, 2B, 6B), 5 drawing pads, 1 set of Talens watercolor tubes (12x12 ml) and some artist paper tapes. These will mostly cover the needs of the beginners group, with some more additional materials from me. But I will need to figure out how to cover the needs of the advanced group for this year. Up to know, I only managed to buy this year a few things: the plastic folding palettes needed by the new attendants, a big roll of tracing paper (it should last for the entire year) and a set of watercolor paints (12x20ml tubes) for the advanced group. I also have a little surprise for the ladies - the Mijello sample colors (Mijello Blue and Peacock Blue) which I received from the USA this summer. I am sure they will love these new blue color additions to their palettes!
We still need more paper, especially heavier one (140 lb CP) for the advanced group and some additional materials (i.e. masking fluid, natural sponges, boards). As always, any help is welcome!

1st Year of the workshop completed

Our first year of watercolor lessons at the Community Center (Β' ΚΑΠΗ Δήμου Πατρέων) has come to the end in June 2015, and I am really proud of the achievements of the entire team! They have managed to come this long way and learn so many things, and they are so much into the watercolor now, that have already started to make plans for the next year!
Yes, we will continue next year, both with beginners and intermediate groups! And, taking into account our commitment of this first year, the Community has decided to help us next year, and provide some of the materials we need!!! Which is wonderful, and very much appreciated by all of us. Basically, we will have materials for a new group of 5 beginners, while the advanced group will need to cover most of the materials. I will continue my volunteer work, and do my best to meet the requirements and expectations of the two groups.

The Community Center organized an event for the end of the year, and we put together a small exhibition stand with a few of the works done by the ladies during this year.

Looking forward to start again in September!

Workshop session #26 - forest started to show

In this session we developed the background wash, with wet-on-wet painting of circular greens, achieved by color variation from yellow to blue at the sides of the paper. When the paper started to dry (not completely) we used the sponge to work on the first layer of foliage and then we had to stop as the paper needs to dry now completely before moving to the next step. Just a couple of photos taken at the end of the session.

The big news of the day: by the end of July we will have a small exhibition with the works of the workshop attendants! The 3 branches of the Community Center are organizing an event to celebrate the completion of the various seminars and activities conducted from September 2014 until June 2015, and we were asked to organize an exhibition with our achievements. Although it is exciting for all of us, there is also quite a lot of work ahead of us!

Workshop session #25 - reference photo selection and composition

Most of the artists working from reference photos indoor to create their paintings use more than one photo to build-up the best composition to convey their message. How to combine the photos, which are the essential elements of each scene, or just how to make abstraction of the annoying details are skills to be learned by every emerging artist and require lots of experiments and hands on studies to master it.
For this session I saved quite a few reference photos from the Reference Images Library of WetCanvas (www.wetcanvas.com), depicting woodlands with old trees and foliage. We are going to further experiment foliage and texture with the natural sea sponge, moving from the single tree to a forest setup. Each lady selected the photos she likes best and had to draw a composition out of them. It was a bit difficult because we only had my laptop to browse the photos, but we did manage to get it done.

 The next step was to transfer the drawing to the watercolor paper, and during the next session we are going to experiment again with the sponge.

And I managed to take photos of some of the paintings done by the ladies during the previous two sessions (not all of them, but quite a few), which I hope you will enjoy.

Session 24 - Making foliage with a sponge

For today we moved on to a new technique, involving the use of a natural sea sponge to make the foliage of a cherry tree in bloom. The ladies at the workshop were so impressed about how easy is to make the foliage look so natural and so beautiful at the same time with the right colors and just a few movements. Of course, it takes some time and quite a few experiments to learn to handle the sponge, and there are also some variations in the sponges which gives different results. We are still experimenting, and I am looking forward for the finished works, as we only managed to get the first few layers of paint done during the workshop after demonstrating the technique and a few experiments on a trial paper.

Session 23 - simple seascape revisited

At the today session we discussed a little bit about the personal interpretation that each artist gives to a certain scene, while the theme/subject is a common one. We looked a bit into the theory of personal choices for composition and color selection. The exercise was to re-do a known subject, but make it personal. The subject was our first painting exercise, a seascape scene with a boat and some land/trees, which at that time was done monochrome (with cobalt blue and black) in an attempt to learn gradient wash of single pigment. Today the aim was to sketch a new composition on the same subject (main elements: sea, sky, boat, trees/rocks/land) and then consider and test a limited palette of 3-4 colors (plus black) and try to evoke a different atmosphere with the new painting (sunset, misty morning, hot afternoon, speed, wind, storm). Today the group only managed to have the sketch done, and transferred to the watercolor paper, so I am looking forward to see how the further interpret it at home or during the next session!

No photos today, I didn't had the camera with me. I promise to get some next time!

p.s. We also looked into the April issue of Watercolor Artist Magazine to the winning paintings of the "6th Annual Watermedia Showcase". As expected, each one had another favorite painting!

Sessions #21 & #22 - the big wave!

As summer approaches we are already dreaming of the great time on the seaside. For now, just walking on the beach and enjoying the sound of the rather big waves as they are breaking and mixing with the sand. And furthermore we are having fun with trying to translate this image into watercolor paintings.
As far as technique is concerned, we are working with wet-in-wet in the sky area (yellow ochre,crimson lake and cobalt blue) , we are learning to use masking fluid to save the whites of the paper to make the waves and foam, and color mixing (viridian and cobalt blue) to get the Mediterranean sea water colors. Work in progress so far, and only a few photos this time.

Session #20 - the red pepper

Next object of our studies is a big red pepper, which seems to give headaches to the ladies to correctly get the three-dimensional shape translated into a good 2-dimensional drawing. A very good exercise, and wonderful paintings in the end (most of them not finished yet, to show them to you in the next post I guess). But we keep having fun, and the ladies dedicate more and more time at home to study watercolor - either painting or read about. I have a collection of Watercolor magazine (I used to have a subscription for many years) and the ladies get one of them each week to have a look at what professional watercolorists do. Most of them do not understand English, but still just looking at the pictures get them exposed to watercolor and various techniques, and makes them start wandering about how one or the other could be done, what colors should I use, etc.

And the surprise at this session was that we had 2 new-comers, that wanted to get a taste of our workshops and already register for the next year beginners workshop!
This alerted me about starting to prepare for the next year beginners workshop! We need, again, to look for some funding schema for our materials. Although it looks like this year we will get some materials through the Community Center (not sure what exactly yet), the needs of a new group are quite high and for sure we will need some help.
As far as I am concerned, I have already decided that I will keep do the workshop on the volunteer basis, and we will keep two groups in 2015-2016, the beginners and the advanced ones.

Session #19 - Pears

Pears and apples are of the most studied fruits by the artists: at some point in our learning path we all meet them! And again, every single painting is different. Difference is something that I encourage our group to aim for: after a few common ground directions about how to correctly draw the objects, about how to attempt paint the cloth behind the fruits and how to lay the washes to keep the light, I propose each lady to work with different colors, to find her own path. And, as you can see from the samples bellow, each painting in the end is a wonderful surprise - I am sure you would love to have them hangging on your walls (their children and grandchildren have started to ask them for custom orders!)!

Sessions #16, #17 and #18 - Drawing and painting from real life

I think one of the basic skills that a painter needs, no matter the medium, is drawing from real life. The easiest way to start with is to set up a simple still life, and try to decompose the objects in simple geometric shapes, such as sphere, cone, cube, cylinder, etc.
Having in mind not only to improve the drawing skills, but also to start look for light and shade to real object and try to render it in a painting, we choose a few simple things (pears and peppers) and added some more complex (glass bottle and sea shells) for more advanced drawing.

Moving around the setup to capture different compositions, and going close or far from the table were among the exercises we did in the first week:

Next week we combined the drawing with some work on the roses for the ones that missed some previous sessions:

Then, we practiced light with monochrome studies, and our paintings started to get some shape:

More work to do next week to finish the paintings, and move to other objects.