Watercolour 1 day workshop Friday the 6th of April 2018

This workshop was aimed at suggestion and simplification of value mass, that is to say, we were painting the colour and tonal shapes, which in this case was the shape of the shadows rather than painting all of the interior of the sabastopol goose.
The object of this approach was to create visual poetry rather than prose, that is not describing every detail, and leaving the viewer to fill in the gaps.



We did 2 paintings today, not all completed, but the object was to copy my own example below to start with, to try to consolidate what we knew about value mass, then by working from a photograph on the 2nd goose to work out our own value mass.
we started this by








We started by working on a thumbnail sketch, and blocking in the shadow tonal shapes…the value mass👆
Once we had clearly identified the areas we were going to paint, we had a practice at very quick washes that were not overworked, as this image required a fresh crisp approach.

This is the actual photograph of the goose, there is a lot of detail in here, and it would be very easy to try to do all the detail, which is not wrong, but for this approach..poetry not prose
It's easier to see the simple areas of value mass when you reduce your image to black and white, bump up the contrast and darken it down

To paint the larger areas in shadow all in 1 wash, we didn't need to work quickly to keep this complex area surface water consistent, we just made sure to keep wetting every area that looked like it was drying, either with water or pigment, but a clear wash was first required within the mass area.

The 2nd goose was painted with safety wheels off! This was a chance for the students to demonstrate they had been listening, and I was very pleased that they did, they repeated the whole process, but this time making their own decisions about what to include and what to eliminate, this wasn't easy, and it helped to have the black and white version at hand







The above are some results from todays workshop, which are not all completed, but the students could take their reference home, and with these notes complete them at home and have another go
Some students said they would like to have put more detail on their geese, so I added a few more details to my demonstration today👆and of course it is possible to continue adding layers of detail wet in wet, to wet on dry once one layer has completely dried,

This workshop was for mixed ability, and an improver level student did this same exercise, but with a daffodil instead, like a previous class in Lundy Green.



I wish my students luck with this at home, and look forwards to to teaching the next workshop on Friday the 4th of May 2018