This 6 sessions watercolor course is dedicated to create quick, fresh watercolors to practice capturing the essential aspects of a subject, improving your technical skills, such as the fluidity  of the brushstroke, the saturation of the color, a variety of textural effects, the economy and elegance of the execution.

We will also practice working with an essential palette using only a few colors: red earth, yellow ochre, blue, black and a few more.

This limited palette is perfect to learn to use each color at its full, its technical characteristics and chromatic possibilities and to capture the subject in its essential aspect.

During each one of the 3 hour sessions, we will aim to create 3 or 4 watercolor paintings, both from photographic references and from masters’ artworks with the intent to paint as much as possible and develop confidence in painting, technical skills and personal technique.

The copies created using Masters’ paintings, will give us the opportunity to analyze and practice the method and technique used by the artists that produced them. The students will then also prepare artworks created “in the style of” Wyeth, Nolde, Hopper, Rodin, Turner and many more artists, both male and female. This approach is very useful to learn to personally interpret a given technique and make independent technical and stylistic decisions.

In this course, we will also prepare small studies, sketches, and preliminary studies to visualize ideas or possible different aesthetic solutions of the same subject.

Materials

• Paint: red earth, (indian red, Venetian red or burnt Sienna) yellow ochre, ultramarine blue, black. You might also want to bring a few extra colors such as burnt umber, green earth, sepia, cobalt blue.
• Paper: a pad (12” by 16” or so), or a few sheets of cold press paper, 140 Lb. We will also use rough and hot press paper, but we will talk about this in class.
• Brushes: #2 and #8 or 10, round. You can use synthetic or natural sables (Kolinsky or red sable), a flat, synthetic brush, about ¾ “will do.