Beginners' Group: Progress on the Roses painting

In our last session we looked a bit at the drawings, correcting a few things here and there, and then moved to the first wash of the background and working on the greens. We are going to finish them next week.

Beginners' Group - working large

After many sessions working mostly on 7x5 inches paper size, and a few times on 10x7 inches, this is the first session working on a relatively large size paper: 1/4 sheet (14x10 inches). I know from my own experience that it is a bit scary, thinking on how are you going to cover all that white with paint, and what if it fails, etc.
So, after doing 2-3 small studies of roses, trying to get around with color mixing, washes for leaves, how to work one area at the time, what to do with the background, and all that helpful staff, we went for the large size.
The task is to magnify and draw by hand a given line drawing, then work first on the background after actually deciding on the entire palette (e.g. what colors to use for the background if I want to make the rose pink/orange/red?), and then go to the details on the leaves and roses.
Here are some photos from the first part (drawing):

1st Watercolor Workshop Session, both beginners and advanced groups

Today we started the Watercolor Workshop for Seniors, both beginners and advanced groups, at the Community Center (2nd ΚΑΠΗ) of Patras city. This was our second meeting for the new "academic" year (2015-2016), as we met previous week to establish some of the administrative issues and get to know each other and our expectations. The beginners group has now already 7 attendants, although we were supposed to start only with 5. And we are waiting for one more to come next week. This makes it more difficult to come around with the materials coverage, but I am confident we will manage. As for the advanced group, I am very happy to say that all 7 ladies that followed the courses previous year joined me again this year! This makes me believe that I did something right previous year, and their excitement and joy to start again means a lot to me. In the advanced group we have one more lady, who is actually following also the beginners lessons, as she has already some drawing and acrylics experience. But she needs to catch up with the basics on watercolors.
So, what we did today?
Beginners: introduction to the watercolor media, materials needed, properties of the watercolor paints, first steps to handle the medium and the brush and paper. We did a small study of color intensity with 5 steps and a "flat wash" to get used to how the color reacts on paper. And that was pretty much what we covered within the one hour of lesson. I hope the next session, with an actual little painting (a seascape study) will be more exciting for the group.
Advanced: a fast pass through the basic watercolor techniques (color value, flat wash, graded wash, dry-on-dry, wet-on-wet, masking fluid, mixing colors on paper); a bit of composition theory and discussion about what a "reference photo" means and how we use it; selection of the photo and a pencil study on the composition; drawing on the transfer paper and transfer of the drawing to the watercolor paper. For the first painting of this year we actually had two reference photos to chose from, one with tomatoes and one with figs.
That would be the update of today, and unfortunately no photos. Next time I hope I get the camera with me.

October 31, 2014 - 3rd Workshop session

Today I had some more time to look immediately after at the photos, and to share them with you. We did practice the graded washes, wet-in-wet color mixing, and a bit of dry to dry with a small little painting of a imaginary seascape. We started with a bit of practice to get a small boat shape done in the sketchbooks, and then used only Cobalt Blue and Ivory Black to do our small paintings, as you can see bellow.

This was our group today:

Practice sketching:

Adding colors:

Showing how we put a flat wash on paper:

Wonderful works from the ladies:

The Community Center president, Mr. George Kolokithas, visiting our workshop:

More progress with our paintings:

By the end of the session, I am sure you cannot say which one is done by me and which one by one of the ladies:

And the most important of all, we are having lots of fun:

Next week: primary, secondary and tertiary colors; making a color wheel; first steps towards watercolor glazing.