Water Color Workshop

You would think that I plenty of time to blog (including time to read and cook so I would have something to blog about), but seems that I have been plenty busy and I haven’t even been golfing!  Last weekend I attended a watercolor painting workshop from Raleigh Kinney. It was a lot of fun, especially since I attended with my Mom (who is already very good at watercolors). 

The technique that Raleigh uses is to start with a value painting (well, after you have found an “interesting” subject).  This is a mono-color painting, starting with a quick pencil drawing, then filling in light and dark.  Only after you are done with this, do you start the final painting.  You start with a pencil drawing, then lay in the background (on wet paper) with low intensity color, then focus on the subject (he does a lot of “negative” painting, doing dark behind something like tree branches), then finish with more shadow and color as needed.  He uses a 2” brush to do most of the work, and can do a full painting in a little over an hour.  His painting technique (wet on wet), from what I know of ceramics, is something that I’m sure would take years to perfect – so while it was interesting, I didn’t set this as my goal to learn.  But where I found he really excelled in design -- how to tell a story in a painting. Plus the value studies were a new concept for me… my sketches have always relied just on lines and color, so this was a new way to look at things.  My big project was doing a painting of a side street in Sienna on a rainy day, based on a photo from our trip last year.
Its scary when you realize how much like your Mom you are, but fun to find the differences.  Mom has done a workshop with Raleigh before, and liked his teaching style. Her goal was to learn how to do landscapes.  If you look at the subject of her paintings, they are mostly things – flowers, birds, animals.  She struggles with landscapes, buildings, things you stand back from.  On the other hand, I suck at drawing things, and going through my sketch book, its pretty much buildings and landscapes, with a few bad drawings of things (like a pigeon).   In the end, Mom ended up with a great landscape painting, I like my painting of a Sienna side street, and still think my flowers.. well, could use improvement.  I’ll stick to buildings and landscapes…  they are fun.