Learning to Paint – Leapday

Around a dozen friends gathered in London yesterday to take advantage of Leapday. We were hosted by the very fabulous Coopers Natural Foods. Amongst other things we practiced drawing and coaching, and we got some fantastic water colour tips from V…

Around a dozen friends gathered in London yesterday to take advantage of Leapday. We were hosted by the very fabulous Coopers Natural Foods. Amongst other things we practiced drawing and coaching, and we got some fantastic water colour tips from Vandy Massey.

The image below shows one of the busy shelves at Coopers. It also shows two pencil drawings I made of a pencil. The one at the top left was before being coached, the one shown bottom right was the after result. In this image you can also see two examples of me playing with wet paint on a wet and dry background. I had not tried painting wet on wet before yesterday and the results interested me. The final part of the image is a grape, painted using the wet on wet technique.

I really enjoyed our Leapday session and I hope I don’t have to wait another four years to experience such a useful fun day again.

Aspects_of_leapday

Learning to Paint – Tree in Blue

I was visiting a friend earlier this week and I found myself on a train with a tiny table sticking from the train wall near my seat. It was just big enough to balance a paintbox on so I had a paint, and this tree appeared. The picture took around …

I was visiting a friend earlier this week and I found myself on a train with a tiny table sticking from the train wall near my seat. It was just big enough to balance a paintbox on so I had a paint, and this tree appeared. The picture took around ten minutes. There’s something about it I quite like, and Carole thinks it’s my best effort yet.

This is a small (A5) water colour on 300gsm paper. I used some neat brushes which Vandy Massey recommended to me. They contain their own supply of water so they are ideal for painting on the move. That said I’m struggling to get the balance of paint and water right, practice practice practice.

I’m going to try some more tree work and see where it takes me.

Tree_in_blueTree_in_blue_and_brushes