* Watercolours with Life * Spring Workshop in the UK

I'm sure a lot of you are eagerly awaiting my report back on Jean Haines workshop Watercolours With Life Spring 2010.

In this post I'm going to focus generally on my experience of my trip to the UK as well as a brief account of Jean's Spring workshop.

Firstly I booked three workshops with Jean, the first two being 'Watercolours with Life' and the third being 'Spring Flowers'. In these workshops Jean focused on negative painting, initial washes to a painting, the importance of colours and how backgrounds can make a painting sing.

DAY 1
Jean did a demo of a simple Snowdrop. I must add at this point....if you have never seen a Snowdrop in real life, it makes it a little more complex to catch the true feel of a subject. But I plodded along with the rest of the group after a warm up of painting an 'egg'! Jean explained that most subjects are painted with the same technique, just a different shape. At this point I was wondering how a Buffalo was going to be painted in the same way as a Snowdrop!!!!! But after a practice session of snowdrops I attempted a Buffalo and ... yes, low and behold, it was the same technique. Just with different blobs of colour!

 My attempt at Snowdrops

This next photo is of Jean demonstrating Snowdrops......

 Jean in Action

Daffodils were next in the line of  practising flowers and negative background painting.....

Jean weaving her magic across the paper!

My feeble attempt at Dafs!

We then went on to watch Jean quietly demo her famous 'Beardie' paintings. She has two adorable Bearded Collies who own her and she lovingly puts them in her paintings with such adoration.....and it shows! This was to demonstrate to us how you can incorporate the background in a negative wash once the subject was established.

Here is Jean painting  her group of Beardie's....

Jean explained how we have to find a 'starting point' of a subject. In this one, it was the Beardie's nose, but it could also be an eye, whichever is the focal point (as you notice... Beardies have no eyes) I'm having a quite giggle to myself at this statement which has just dawned on me as to why Jean chose the nose.

My Buffalo followed shortly after Jean's demo of Beardies with the negative painting as demonstrated to us. Not all that happy with the outcome, I lost it a bit in the face, but a wonderful exercise of using the same technique as for the snowdrops, dafs, Beardies and egg.

My Buffalo

This was the end to a wonderful day as we cleaned up our tables ready for the next day, exhausted but exhilarated. 

A few things I learned was that Jean has a few interesting ideas in her way of  working.....1:  White Paper- is deliberately left in her paintings, this helps lift the painting. 2: Jean never holds a pencil in her hand.... all her paintings are done without a preliminary sketch, instead she works mainly with a big brush and a rigger. 3: For simplicity Jean also paints half a face which creates interest for the viewer and gives the viewer the pleasure of completing the painting in there own way! Quite interesting, as depending on one's mood or surroundings it could take on different results every time one looks at the piece......

Bye, till next time......

My Week with Hazel Soan - Final Day

Apologies for the delay in  adding the last day of Hazel's workshop... I have been sorting out my wonderfully exciting workshop next week in the UK with Jean Haines.  Jean, as many people know, has been a huge inspiration to me and my art. Not only is she a wonderfully talented philanthropic artist, but has a heart of gold...she is a warm-hearted, effervescent soul who loves what she does and is happiest when she can share her love of watercolour. I'm looking so forward to my trip with anticipation as well as excitement.


Getting back to Hazel's 4th day ....

We extended our learning to 'painting animals in watercolour' on the last day. Hazel stared a wonderful demo for us on painting Elephants. I unfortunately discovered as I sat down to watch that I'd forgotten to charge my camera battery and was unable to document her demonstrations. I was kindly loaned some pictures taken by a fellow artist Sylvia Coward of the final day's painting session.

Here we used various combinations of (transparent )pigment to create our ellies. The three basic colours which Hazel used were yellows, blues and reds. I always thought that Elephants were grey or, at least shades of grey. But Hazel with her three shades stressed that tone and not colour was the important factor in creating wonderful watercolour. Her use of these colours were excellent for achieving the correct tones. These lovely tones were created in layers or washes.

 

In my first sorry painting I used Yellow Ochre- but watered it down as it's a semi transparent colour, Ultramarine Blue and Alizarin Crimson. No preliminary sketch.

 

The next Ellie was more in proportion.... here we used Indian Yellow, Alizarin Crimson and Prussian Blue. In that order. Added blues to the shadow areas gave the elephant form and depth.

My final attempt with variation of tone was the use of Raw Umber, Prussian Blue and Carmine. Again using the three transparent colours, adding the red as a last wash. Mixing in a little darker values of the palette for the shadows.


Here is one of  Hazel's Elephants..... please note the depth in her ellies with the correct placement of darks.

 Photograph courtesy Silvia Coward

We than went on to painting a herd of  elephants. Hazel's subtle build up of colours to create tone on all the elephants was interesting as none of the ellies were painted with the exacting colours, but attention was placed on the tone, ranging from dark in the foreground to soft muted colours for the ellies in the distance, still only using yellows, reds and blues. Placing the various colours, one wash at a time slowly building up tone. She added the background foliage using the same colours on her palette to highlight the light on the backs of the elephants and to bring them forward.

Softening the base of the feet with water gave the illusion of dust been kicked up as the ellies walked by.(photo Silvia Coward)


Here was my group painting, pity I added red in the background foliage.. that just killed the depth of my painting.

I thoroughly enjoyed my Elephant painting exercise.... I can see myself painting lots more of these guys !


Lastly, our final demo for the day was the lioness portrait. Here Hazel used her paper of choice- Khadi Paper, which is cotton rag paper made in India. It has a wonderful rough finish and perfect for textures. The colours come out more vibrant too.

She sketched her lion's head on the paper to follow the features more accurately. In this demo she said we were no longer painting shapes but painting inside a block, picking out the features one by one. Starting with the ears, a wet in wet section was painted, dropping in burnt sienna to the light ochre wash and the darks were then added, using Winsor violet. She lifted out areas of highlights with a clean damp brush then added sepia for more definition. She moved onto the face, again starting with ochre and burnt sienna, building up to the darks. The lioness' chin was next, after the ochre and b sienna was added a darker shadow area was painted in, using W violet. By dampening the paper inside the white bearded area with water and dropping in Winsor violet underneath leaves a lovely soft edge.The outline of the eyes were painted using sepia, softened first with a stroke of water on the outside so the eye wasn't left with a hard outline. She dropped in ochre and B sienna into the eye and a drier mix of sepia for the pupil but leaving the white highlight.

Again, photograph courtesy of  Silvia

My lioness from a photo in my collection... not at all happy with the end result as I had overworked it. I realised I had painted it too light and went back in with stronger pigments.... Big mistake!!!! But, here it is anyway!!!!!!!!

My workshop with Hazel Soan was truly a memorable one. A warm friendly bubbly persona wrapped up in a tiny slender frame, Hazel is overflowing with artistic knowledge and enthusiasm.
This is not only an account of what I witnessed through detailed instruction as the inspiration I found and the sense of  urgency at which I wanted to pick up a brush and paint. Thank you Hazel!

My week with Hazel Soan - Day I

What a fabulous week I've had! I attended a watercolour workshop with Hazel Soan, international artist and author. To say that the enthusiasm and energy from Hazel is electric, would be an understatement. She is bubbling with knowledge and a wonderful person to meet.

Sitting anxiously in my first session, watching as she explained that we are not creating a picture on paper but  a whole array of 'brush strokes'. Shapes are what we must be looking at, not the object that we see. It's all about light and brush strokes!!!

When painting, we need to be looking at tone and light not exact colours.... 'Watercolour' is the reason we paint a subject not the subject wanting to be painted. Do you get my jist? You can take the dullest photo and make it alive with watercolour, as long as the tones and lights are there. Even when sitting out in the fresh air painting a scene,one must look for relative tone. We need not copy the exact colours we see, but paint to entertain the eye!

Leaves: They are not leaves but 'brush strokes'. By adding colour to the leaves brings in life as colour changes according to surrounding and light.

 

 1 stroke 'brush stoke leaves'

 2 or multiple brush stroke leaves

Flowers: They are not flowers but splashes of beautiful colour!

Practising flowers with just brushstrokes 

 Sunflowers using Indian Yellow, Burnt Sienna and Prussian Blue with Aureolin for leaves

Limit your colour palette and keep it simple, "watercolour is perfect".... less is more as they say in the classics.

Learning wonderful tips from Hazel was so exciting. She taught us about which useful colours we should keep on our palettes, the size of our waterpots...hers were surprisingly small!.... and she doesn't use much pigment when mixing either. Pigment is precious and I was amazed to find how much I was wasting by rinsing my bushes so often.

We also learnt wet in wet work with brush strokes. By adding enough pigment strength on the brush will determine how far your colour bleeds back into the wet background, Fascinating!!!!!

 Backlit  Reeds

You can see the different strengths of pigment by the size of the bleed (middle), as the background dried so the strokes became more crisp (right). But one is able to achieve incredibly thin lines in wet paper if your pigment is strong.

One very valuable lesson I learned was that paper is of utmost  importance. The first few studies were done on really grotty quality paper and it shows. I eventually succumbed to using Arches rough 300gsm for my studies! Sounds incredibly extravagant, but found that you can't achieve the right results if you use poor quality paper.


Thanks Hazel for a wonderful first day!!!

I will be back to fill you in on the rest of the week.

Practice, Practice, Practice

That is what top artists will say to you if you want to improve your skills in painting. "A painting a day" is another..... Basically, you need to just paint, paint, paint, even if it's just playing with 'colour mixes', 'shadows', trying tonal values, sketching etc. But we all know that..... don't we? It's not the only way we learn, but it's the best way...... Remember, It's a journey of growth, so enjoy it!

How many of us actually do paint daily?... I'm blushing here, as I fall into the 'non-daily' painters camp! Life just seems to get in the way sometimes and I forget that painting is or should be part of my daily therapy. And boy, do I need therapy! However I do feel terribly guilty if,  by the end of the day I haven't picked up a brush or pencil. 2010however does look promising as I find myself with more time on my hands and less daily interruptions.

I have a few commitments this early this year with 2 wonderful workshops coming up so I really need to practice and get my brushes flowing. The first workshop is with Hazel Soan, who will be visiting South Africa soon - Hazel is an internationally renowned artist and is the author of seven books on painting in watercolours. The other 2 exciting workshops I'll attend are in the UK with renowned artist Jean Haines. http://www.jeanhaines.com/ Jean has been my mentor and inspiration for a number of years now, she has a unique loose style of painting which I admire and is in the process of having her first book published.I have had the fortune of meeting Ms Haines last year at a workshop she ran on 'Watercolours with Life' and although, exhausting, enjoyed my self immensely.

Here are a few sketches I was practicing using Hazel Soan's 'African African Watercolours'.

Sketches from Hazel's book...using my moleskin.

And one using my own photo... minus preliminary sketch.

This painting was from a photo I took at the Rhino and Lion Park last year. 

This ewe was actually feeding.....hence her looking away from the camera,

  I left the young Springbok out of the painting....

I plan to do flowers next.....(Jean style). I have hundreds and hundreds of photos of flower studies.....

so best I get cracking......

Have a lovely weekend all... till next time.....

Child Of Innocence

 
Child of Innocence was inspired by a photograph
taken by photographer John Spies, with thanks.
It portrays a little Black Lahu girl captured in a pensive
mood. When I saw this I just had to paint her. Her
captivating eyes grabbed me and the light and shadows
showed a very haunting story of an Opium smoking
village in Thailand where the unborn children were so
addicted to Opium from their mothers that the mothers
had to blow Opium smoke into their faces after they
were born, to calm them down.
Apparently the laws there have changed since then!
But the need to paint this powerful photo of her runs
deeper than just the story behind those eyes!
A watercolour, painted wet on wet and dry brush detail
at the end.