July 12 and July 17 ’16
Carolyn leaves our village later in the week so this was a fast tracked journey directly from wc pencil straight to watercolours
To warmup we started with a sketch of the candelabra still on the table from last night.
Then in our first watercolour attempt we threw on some chinagraph to keep white tops and sides then chose some colours we thought worked well.
Paint goes into the palette lid and is diluted or strengthened before applying to the page. We used 3-4 colours and learned to apply in one stroke followed by another colour and let it blend on its own. No painty painty.
Next sketch your paint box and palette. First with one hand, then the other.
Whaaaat. Never done that before.
Quite a good idea to try this.
We sketch away and have to laugh at how our ‘control’ seems to have gone. Good. That’s the point.
Next mission was ‘people’. One sigh of despair from one sketcher! Some bad prior experiences clearly. All in the past. Let’s simply look at the shapes of people. The form. The line. The action.
We took turns to sketch each other. 20seconds per sketch. Go go go.
Time was a little short but we could still get some chinagraph down and slosh some paint on. They looked great. Time to get going but everyone was pretty pleased they’d lost the fear and let the lines go.
Great work you two. I’m
Very proud of what you’ve managed to do in such a short time.
Go forth into the world and sketch.
Rose is our granddaughter and is most interested in art history and discovering more about her creative side. Between our hectic social engagements we found a quiet moment to have a first sketch class.
A pot of petunias, an A4 sketchbook and some black drawing pens. That’s all you need to get started.
We do the observing, the measuring and the page planning. Get that sorted and you’re in control.
Big shapes, where are the other shapes.how high, how wide.
Big loose fearless lines. A bit nerve wracking at first. But then you begin to see the lines making sense and confidence emerges.
We applied layers of watercolour pencil and before long we had a beautiful quick impression of pink and purple petunias.
Smiles all round. Said you could do it!
ErinHillSketchingJuly17’16France
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