This is a painting inspired by this video which I repeated over and over for my Tuesday class: Painting and Drawing.
Ekaterina’s voice grew on us and we marveled at her cameleon accent saying A la prima with an Italian accent and something else sounded very British.
I had brought this sketch over but the painting had yet to be painted. Can you spot the hair? honestly I wish I thought of drawing that line myself.
My students struggled with this painting but ultimately prevailed. In this last one, that paper is clearly overworked. However, working from a simple color palette served them well. Sap green, ultramarine blue and burned sienna is all you really need.
A La Prima (which as I learned means with my cousin in Spanish) is Italian for: in one sitting. This effortless style means that nothing should be overworked and the art should convey a sense of serenity. I think they all achieved this in some respects and as always I am very proud.
In the second one, the reflection of the cliff had a really hard line which I helped to lift. I was grateful that this artist was working on amazingly resilient paper.
The fibre was high quality but it is the glue in the paper that helped the most with my intervention.
Watercolour has a lot in common with signing. Just like the muscles of the throat you must learn to relax, you need a loose attitude with your brush. The irony is that it is easy to clean and very portable but just as difficult to learn as any other medium. If you have the means to treat a 10$ paper casually, you do have an advantage, especially when it comes to perfecting dry brush and scumbling, which I hope to cover in an upcoming post.
Personally, I use Strathmore 11X14 paper that comes to about 2.75 CAD. By telling myself that it is less than a beer, I can be looser and more experimental with my work, focussing more on the fun than the result.
I painted this during class after we all watched another video. I did not consult it in the process and in retrospect, I should have left more of the white of the paper to break up the rocks. It is an outstanding memory exercise to only watch a tutorial once and fill in the gaps with improvisation, it truly helps make the ideas your own.
It was fun to study dry brush technique. With fast strokes and making sure my brush was not too wet, I could showcase the grain of the paper as you can see in the texturized areas.
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