Introduction to Watercolour: From Sketch to Fine Art with
FRED OSTHER
a full weekend course - Saturday and Sunday November 14th and 15th
This is the perfect course for you if you are new to watercolour and process painting generally - the perfect course to take if you are not feeling quite confident enough for Javis Tabatabaei’s more advanced course.
$250 for the full weekend (including materials - all materials supplied by the studio)
Watercolour painting gives artists a versatile tool to make great paintings regardless of their preferred medium. Every new project starts with a vision that the artist hopes will be realized after a lot of hard work. Success, however, can slip away because of poor choices in materials/techniques and, sometimes, because sound design principles were not established ahead of time.
Watercolour is ideally suited for testing your ideas and planning larger artworks. It does not take much time and the equipment is easy to carry around. It’s great for quick studies such as travel journals and urban sketching. It is well suited to plein-air painting and of course studio fine art.
Perhaps watercolour’s most important characteristic is its transparency. Light reflects back from the pigments similar to oil paint but in addition light bounces off the underlying paper. This creates a radiance that is unique to watercolour paintings. Over several sessions, we will work through those materials and methods that will help you keep this radiance and avoid the muddiness or blandness that seems to show up uninvited.
We will also explore common design principles that apply to watercolours, and in fact, all two-dimensional artworks. Shapes, values, edges and colours comprise the building blocks of our paintings. Sound design principles in terms of contrast, variety, atmosphere, texture and composition influence how we use these building blocks to create a successful painting.
This course will introduce students to the basics of watercolour techniques and materials. We will explore key design principles as we work through sketches, painting small landscapes and creating watercolours in the studio.
This course will be held over 2 sessions. The first session will introduce you to the basics of watercolour painting in a one-day workshop. The second session will take place on day two where we will apply this wonderful medium to sketching, small landscapes and studio techniques.
Together we will explore:
1. How to control water, pigment and paper to produce rich colours and a broad range of values.
2. Techniques and materials that are best suited to your project whether it is a sketch, working outdoors or painting in the studio.
3. How key design principles are applied to your project with a special focus on composition and values.
4. How to apply watercolour to your sketches.
5. How to paint small landscapes directly and relatively quickly.
6. How to paint studio watercolours.
7. In the final session, you will work on your own image.
All supplies for the first workshop will be provided by the studio. Please call thew studio at 604-250-5562 to book, or use the contact feature on the main page
