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.

October 24, 2014 - 2nd Workshop session

On Friday, October 24, 2014, we meet for a second time, to start the real fun with mixing watercolors. At first, I was informed that one of the ladies decided to quit, as having the week day fixed to Friday doesn't fit her schedule (he is usually out of town on Fridays), and it was a bit disappointing. But then, the good news is that we have managed to get materials for more ladies, and we can go up to 10 (at least the initial group of ladies that registered since the beginning of summer)!
On previous Friday I meet 7 of them, and moved on to first washes of watercolor on paper. They were all very happy with trying out the new mixing palettes, brushes, and paints and all other materials. And I did manage this time to take a few photos, which although not the best quality, I am sure you will enjoy.

What we did in this second session:
- had a look at the "homework" done by the ladies that attended the first session, and discussed the different approaches taken to make sketches of simple home objects; the big surprise for all of them was to discover how good they actually did compared to what they expected
- discussed how to further progress with sketching exercises, and the next homework is to have some object magnification done and work on values to get object likeness and light
- discussed the first pigments (colors) we are going to use, and the first exercises to exercise color values, flat and graded washes
- started with first colors on the palette: Gamboge Hue, Crimson Lake, Cobalt Blue and Ivory Black.
- exercised in the class the washes with the Cobalt Blue

I was expecting we would have time to also do a first small painting, to further exercise the graded wash, but with the introduction of the news ladies we spend more time than expected. Thus, this Friday (October 31), this will be the first thing we will start with.

October 14, 2014 - 1st workshop session!

Yes! We did it! Finally we got around all the problems and started the fun! We started with 5 ladies at this first meeting, and 2 more will join us from the next session. Unfortunately no photos yet, as I forgot my camera at home trying to get all the materials with me.
What we did in this first meeting:
1. introduced to each other and talked about the reasons we are there (most of us were always dreaming of painting someday, but we were always afraid our hand doesn't have it)
2. talked about what watercolor is, and how does it differ from other media, especially tempera and acrylics, which seemed to be more known and usual terms for the attendants
3. introduced the main materials that we are going to use, and talked about the various options out there, about the amount of materials needed, about their costs, and about the right moment to decide to invest in own materials; the ladies were very happy that they have the opportunity to try it out at no cost, and only if they really like it and what to continue work more intensively at home to have to buy something
4. talked about the need to learn sketch and practice it as often as possible, at first with very simple everyday objects that are similar to simple geometric shapes (sphere, cylinder, cone, cube)
5. had a small introduction of what a fast preparatory sketch is, how we use the pencils and got an exercise on the way to be completed at home and during the next week
6. looked into some of the Artists watercolor magazine issues to see how watercolor paintings look like; some of the ladies borrowed some of them for home study, which made me very happy because they are going to introduce a new element in their everyday life

And that was all about our first meeting - fun with colors next week! From the next week our meetings were established to take place every Friday, which suits better the schedule of the Community Center.

Fixing last details, and ready to start!

Although a bit in delay to start our workshop, which was initially scheduled to start in September, the good news is that we have managed to finish the bureaucratic details and we are ready! Basically I am waiting now any of the following days to get a call telling me the exact start date, and to let the fun begin! I am so much looking forward to meet my fellow ladies and I hope all of them will get excited about watercolors and keep come every week.
My next post will be about our first meeting and I hope the ladies will agree to have their photos and works posted in the blog!

Paints and brushes are also stocked for our workshop - ready to go!

Yep - watercolor paints and brushes arrived today!
After lots of research to figure out the best quality of watercolor paints that we can buy at cheap price, I realized that even the student grade paint I could find here was quite expensive. The cheapest was at about 2.5$ per 10 ml of paint or 1.5$ per half-pan (which I think is the equivalent of 5 ml of tube paint). I started to look at various other options, like less known watercolors from Germany or Russia. While lurking in the watercolor forum on WetCanvas, I was lucky enough to find an interesting thread about some indian artist quality watercolor called Camlin. One of the artists that have used it gave quite good recommendation to this paint, comparable even to some well-known artist paints from USA. Furthermore, the price of the paint, even after taking into account the shipping costs, is much less than any student quality paint that I could find here (about 0.75 $ per 5 ml). I was a bit worried about ordering from India, from rather unknown website, but in the end it turned out into a good experience! I just got my parcel from the post office and everything is in the box.
Bellow, a few photos of the materials received:

We are still missing some good quality paper for the workshop, especially starting with the 3rd session. I hope we will manage to collect some more funds, as very little is left for paper. However, I think we are now set up to start the first workshop in September 2014 with at least 5 ladies!

Due to the lack of funding for the materials, I have discussed the issue of the number of participants with the responsible of the community center. She proposed that we make a first group of 5 ladies to start with in September, which, unfortunately, means that some of the ladies that were interested to attend will have to wait for the next year (in the best case it could be in January 2015).

First Materials on the way

Although we haven't manage to get much funding so far, it is time to get prepared for the workshop - the ladies are looking forward to start!
I am currently looking at all options to select the best possible materials we can afford, even with these little money. The very difficult issue is that of the good paper, which might not even be completely solved by the time we will start. But we need the materials for the first couple of sessions, where we can start doing color tests on cheap paper to learn about primary, color mixes, etc. We also need some sketching paper, pencils and erasers. We need some brushes and we need some palette to mix colors. And, something that we cannot leave aside - the watercolor paints.

Yesterday I went to Plasio store here in Patras, which has some "hobby" quality art and craft materials, but at the same time some student and artist quality too. After looking at the various options of palettes they have, some quite very cheap (under 1 euro) with a few mixing areas, I opted for a cheap folding palette from Reeves.

Why this one? Well, it only costs 2 euros (actually 1.99 :)), and it is made from a good sturdy plastic. It has in total 20 small mixing wells and 5 large mixing area. It is small enough to be used outdoors too, but with plenty of space to handle paints. And, very important for me at the first stage, we can also fully open it, and make two palettes out of one, each of them costing about 1 euro, but having more mixing space than any palette I could find for 1 euro.
Thus, I placed an order for 5 of these right now, and if we cannot find more funds to buy another 5, we will just split each of these into 2 parts and that makes the 10 palettes we need to start!

I have also ordered 5 small sketch pads and 2 cheap watercolor blocks with 20 sheets each , pencils and erasers, with a total cost of 10 euros. The sketch pads should last for the first 5 weeks, with each lady using one sheet during the workshop and one for home exercise every week. The watercolor blocks will cover the need of paper for color mixing charts for the first 2 weeks, after which we will definitely need some better paper.

I will show you photos of these materials as soon as I receive them.

1st Milestone - we are Almost There!

We would like to express our gratitude to  Aleta Delaplane and to her mother, for generously contributing to our project with a total of 101 US$! This contribution was sent to us directly through PayPal, but it equally qualifies for the rewards that we have established for the indiegogo project (the so called perk system). Thus, as a reward for their contribution, they will soon receive the original watercolor painting "Sweet Temptation" and a Open Edition print of size 7x10 inches of the watercolor "Calla Lilies".
Thank you Aleta and mom!!!

Basically, we are now missing only 4 US$ to reach the first milestone, which will permit us to get 3 Starter Kits. That will certainly not stop us, but any help will be appreciated!