Blooming Tuesday and Watercolor class

This blooming Tuesday photo was taken last Saturday on my way to see my family in Berkeley, CA! I think it's wisteria, but you may correct me if I am mistaken. It was gorgeous! On Sunday I took my first ever WATERCOLOR class at the community college. The teacher was the same as the one who taught the DRAWING WITHOUT FEAR class I took three weeks ago. His name is Robert Regis Dvorak and he has a web site: www.youcreate.com. I loved the first class and I loved this one too: The Magic of Watercolor. They were both fun and filled with valuable information, non stop exercises from 9:30 AM- 4:30 PM and we went a bit over that this time. One of the first exercises was to simply use all the colors in our palette in an abstract design. Once done and dried we were to use a small rectangle stencil and pick 3-5 spots that made small finished paintings. These are mine:

I was quite proud of my finished very first masterpieces. ;-) she said humbly.

Then we got a lesson in color and color mixing, complimentary colors, etc. We were to next copy a drawing of a bird and paint it however we wished. Becoming comfortable using our brush, which is a long wooden handled Calligraphy brush: CC3 Yasutomo China

In this exercise we drew minimal light lines and learned about leaving white paper

in this case for a waterfall, starting with sky, painting mountains, fanning the brush to make striations in the mountain sides, and drawing trees with our paint brush.

These trees were done leaves first, then trunk. I neglected to leave white in my leaves for more branches (I'll do better next time)...and shading on the trunks using a darker color.

All the exercises seemed to be done quickly. Watercolors as you know

and I learned dry very very very quickly so you have to work fast.

Then we learned how to make people with little multicolored blobs for faces,

a sideways swish of the brush for shirts, and a downward swish for legs and skirts and pants.

Hair added to point faces in different directions. Most of mine are looking forward.

This exercise felt like pre-school. We painted the blobs of color and then sprinkled salt on them

which gave them the textured look. Once dry we used a plastic knife or a credit card to

scrape off the salt. Then we used a thin bamboo spear to draw lines and trees on the hills, and water fall in between the bottom hills.

And then we were to draw and paint a banana using different colors

to show depth and shading. I am surprised at how realistic mine

looks to me today. I think it aged well over night. Ripened!

And last and quickly done this combo of sky, mountains, trees and waterfall.

Leaving the left hand lower corner open to invite the eye into the picture.

Not bad for a first time ever water colorist?

;-)

It was FUN!!!!