Ink, Yarn & Beer

Watercolor Workshop, Day 1

I was lucky enough to get a spot in Brenda Swenson‘s watercolor workshops in the Los Angeles area. I was waitlisted and got unwaitlisted. Now I am thoroughly enjoying myself!

Today was the first day. We started out with loose, continuous line drawings. Start and stop, but never lift up the pen. The point of the exercise is to create “lost edges” – leave out a line and let the mind fill in the rest. While not the first exercise, we did this one to compare and contrast the interest that comes with lost edges.

The study on the left is an upside-down plastic frog. Drawing all the outlines and then some – not too exciting. The second one, while not especially great, gets the point across: lost edges give you something to participate with in the drawing.

More studies followed. I did a clove of garlic, a packet of string, and a David Austin-esque rose.

I like all of these, but the rose is my favorite. We could only spend three minutes for each picture. Something to think about: how much time do you have to do a drawing or a painting? I must say I never considered that.

From drawing with lost edges, we moved on to painting with lost edges. We did ink sketches and then used watercolor. In watercolor, the lost edges work their magic while the paint is wet, and the artist judiciously touches one wet color to another, allowing the colors to bleed into one another. In particular, Brenda pointed out how this works for shadows, especially for reflected light, form shadow, and even (but lesser) for cast shadows.

She said she pays a great deal of attention to shadows . . . I never really thought about shadows quite so much! Below are two I did. The one with the apricots worked out well, I think; we did three 3-minute sketches of the same object in ink or whatever, and then penciled in the shadows prior to painting.

Finally, while I was rather impatiently waiting for areas of this image to dry, I did a casual sketch of a carrot, working to create lost lines and bleeds. I just did it freehand with a brush over a line drawing I had done earlier in the session. Serendipity sometimes works in your favor!

Tomorrow, painting from photographs . . . and a critique. Eek!

Sunflowers

I ordered some 9×12 pads of Arches 140# cold press paper. I have forgotten how nice it is to use 100% cotton paper with a heavy wash. I did this between breakfast and leaving for work. Bleeds and blooms, so to speak, in a very short time.

First Daffodils

These are some of the first daffodils in the botanical garden. I don’t know if I will be able to see too many more as there is rain predicted over the next two weeks. When this happens, the gardens close down to keep erosion on the hilltop and trails to a minimum.

California Poppies

There is a poppy coming up in the front garden! With rain, even more will begin to show up in the hills and fields, along with lupines and other wildflowers. The quintessential California wildflower – delicate, lovely, bright.

I did this as a quick sketch this morning to test out a package of 5o pre-cut 6×9 cotton papers from Bee. So far, the paper is pretty nice.

45.3 Tulips (Iron Gall Ink) – Painted

I should have done a value study here, but not in the mood, and not having a lot of time, I just decided to paint, hoping I “saw” the shadows enough. Pretty tulips turned into a rather ugly mess! Still, it is a learning experience, and the doing is often more important than the final results. I am quite sure my paintings will be gone and not found in a museum.