Saturday, March 5, 2011

Southwest Watercolor Workshop

Here are some of the ladies from the Southwest Watercolor Workshop I taught at the Colorado Springs Fine Art Center yesterday. We had a great day of creating, sharing and learning. I focused on landscapes in the morning and old pots in the afternoon.
We started with a light sketch of the rocks and land forms and then wet the area for the sky, dropping in pastel colors. While still wet, I used kleenex to lift out some clouds. If you don't want really hard edges on your clouds you need to baby sit them and every few minutes blot around the edges to keep them soft.
The next step was to paint the rock areas using raw sienna, bunt sienna and some purple on dry paper. Then I used plastic wrap to create texture. I also started adding some shadows in the sky around the clouds, being careful to blend edges where needed.
You can see the nice texture created with the plastic. I continued to work on the sky and started adding shadows between the buttes to seperate them. Also, began to paint some distant land forms using purple mixed with a little burnt sienna.
Here is the final painting. I added a hint of yellow ochre in the sky and more distant buttes. I continued to shadow and detail the land forms and added a few grasses in the front. I think everyone in the class did a great job and it was fun to see their personal creative stamp on the final paintings.

Southwestern Sky - SOLD - 11x15 inches original watercolor.