watercolor class 03



third class this past monday was great!  it was cool to learn about abstract painting and to practice loose, quick painting, getting the shapes and values down more than being accurate or focusing on details.  it was definitely a liberating exercise for me, as i tend to be pretty meticulous.

 this is a series of fast burns, 5-minute paintings focusing on the general shapes, values and the general feel of the still life.  i used a size 30 round brush for the next 4 sketches, which are of various proportions, and no larger than 6"x4".



charcoal and watercolor

pastel and watercolor

charcoal and watercolor

pastel and watercolor



this is a series of thumbnails, about 2"x3" each, where with a more simplified approach.  i used only two colors in the first two thumbnails, yellow+purple and red+blue, and only one color in the third, brown (oddly, my least favorite color in general.  i hardly ever wear brown, and only in certain color combinations ... says i, as i'm wearing an olive green v-neck sweater and a taupe cardigan which totally looks brown next to the olive green!  my friend lori likes the combo!). 



i used a very large round brush for such a small sized thumbnail, size 20, which forced me to be quick and to make general impressions on the paper, rather than to focus on details.

 

two-tone and single-tone thumbnails



this is an in-progress larger abstract painting of the same still life.  the difference here is that i did the graphite drawing and the painting with my left hand.  i'm right handed.  this is another way of forcing yourself not to get too detailed, but to try and capture the general feel of the still life ... debatable whether or not i achieve that, but nonetheless, this exercise was pretty freeing. 

 



graphite and watercolor

-cristina