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.

Scorched Earth

I'm really enjoying my landscapes at the moment. It's always good to try out new things and subjects, in fact it's quite refreshing.Landscapes have never been my strong point, but I've recived wonderful positive feedback regarding the few that I've done.

This one is a light sketch of  the Namib desert in Namibia, north of South Africa. With it's vast open thirsty plains and dunes, it's surprising how much life lives there. The rains frequent only every 10 years or so, but the flora and fauna which thrive there are all accustomed to the scorching heat.

Game is plentyful, from the little speckly patina (lizard) and meercats to big cats like the leopard and lion. Each has their use and purpose in the dusty plains of Namibia.

The plant, Welwitschia grows quite easily there, and is considered to be a Fossil. It has a 20m (60ft) taproot burying into the ground. Most of it's moisture is derived from the early morning dew or mist coming in from the coast. Two long leaves grow constantly and fray at the ends from the wind. They are quite spectacular to see! Welwitschia. Camelthorn trees and some acacias are also inhabitants of this arid thirstland.

          The Welwitschias growing in the thirstland of the Namib desert

A Beauty in my Garden

What a wonderful sight in my garden at the moment... I was thinking a few months back of taking it out or at least chopping it back as it's quite an encroaching plant and it was getting in the way of  my pathway to my indigenous garden.

 

Delicious Monster

This is a Delicious Monster (Monstera Deliciosa) or Swiss Cheese Plant, native to tropical rain forests of Mexico. This particular specimen of mine has never flowered, and this year it has been so prolific and graced me with the most amazing cone shaped flowers or fruit as some would say. Apparently the fruit of the Delicious Monster is edible, but I wouldn't want to try it, as one man reported Here. But I have read that the fruit tastes like a cross between a pineapple and a banana. The fruit may be ripened by cutting the fruit when the first scales begin to lift up and the fruit begins to exude a pungent odour, then wrapping it in a paper bag and setting aside until the kernels begin popping off. The kernels are then brushed off; they fall away to reveal the edible flesh underneath. The flesh, which is approximately like that of pineapple in texture, is then cut away from the core and eaten. It has a fruity taste similar to jackfruit and pineapple. Eating fruit which has not matured and still has the kernels firmly attached, exposes the throat to the oxalic acid and is dangerous...

 

Close-up of the Delicious Monster

I'm still not fond of this plant but look at it now with renewed eyes, it's no longer a hindrance and a 'common' space filler in my garden but something of unique beauty albeit only for a few months of the year. I will however keep it in shape and hopefully it flowers again next year!

  A little friend also had to see what this 

   wonder was that sprung up in his garden.

Artichoke and Gerbers studies

My cousin's artichokes in her veggie garden had gone to flower so she picked a few for a vase in her kitchen. They were huge and I fell in love with the lovely fluffy purple tops against the glorious green hard spikes, so she gave them to me to paint.

 

Artichoke Flower Studies 

  

The inspiration

The flower store was offering 3 pots of Gerber's on special so I purchased a baby pink one, a cerise pink and a lovely orange pot. Here are a couple of studies of the orange one I did..... I have studied the sketches and there is definitely some room for improvement here, I'd like to do others with more lost edges around the petals.

 

Gerber Studies

Aloe

I quietly painted this the other day... we have just had our flush of different aloes flowering up the driveway to our house..... this is one which is quite botanical to my eye.... not sure if it needs a bit of a back-ground colour which will give it that edge!! Any suggestions.....?