This Thursday I had two ladies - Christine and Barbara - come to my home studio for a watercolour painting day. They are members of Pentyrch Art Society and I have also know Christine from when we were both painting at Arnold Lowrey’s watercolour classes years and years ago.

There was much chat about types of paint, brands of paper and models of palettes and a god lot of information exchanged. We all tend to have our own way of painting and may not realise that another simple tool added to our armory would be a good thing.

After seeing how useful Barbara’s pipette water dropper was I feel the need to get one. Similarly Christine took a shine to how I used my very fine water mister to keep the painting damp as she worked.

Christine had recently been on a trip to Tanzania and had taken 100′s of animal photos in the wild from which she worked during the day.

I am a big fan of Betty Edwards as you know and so we did some of her exercises including a blind contour drawing where Barbara’s drawing hand and sheet of paper was covered with a box as she drew a woodworking tool held in her other hand. The result was amazing!

We also worked upside down as needed in order to see shadows and tone better! It’s incredible how shadows jump out at you once you turn a photo upside down.

The focus was on animals and so we dove straight in with a realistic dog’s eye. It was a fun day and very interesting to see other artists at work! Here are some photos of art in action!

It was great having painting company in my studio and we all enjoyed a M&S Victoria sponge cake and tea later in the afternoon.

If you fancy a half day or a full day session learning about watercolour please contact me via eastwitching@hotmail.com and you may find this additional blog post about it useful too. https://eastwitching.com/2013/04/18/art-blossoms-painting-days-new-for-springsummer-2013/

Alison