What a lovely day I had yesterday painting children in my watercolour workshop. Figures are my favourite subjects, I love the shapes, colours and compositional story telling possibilities they offer. I have been working on a series of watercolours and collage paintings based around what people do when they are waiting for something, whether it be a train, bus or plane, how they occupy their time and interact with the people around them.
That aside, I wanted to show you one of the demos I had planned for yesterday. We painted mainly children paddling, which included reflections of course, so I ended the day with small group of children all being led along, ruck sacks full, off to swimming perhaps, or a day trip out (after all, we had to include feet didn't we)?
This was how I began.
I always like to allow my figures to touch in some way. This as I am sure you know is always a bit risky, especially as I like to keep things a bit wet, after all, whats the point of painting watercolour on the safe side? Far more exciting to let the colours run a bit and invite the colours to merge.
The next two children I add remembering to leave some edges for the light later on, I always use my Classic brush, people think its really big, but its the equivalent to a size 12, I would not work with anything smaller even for very small paintings.
Just the last figure to add and of course the background,this brings it all to life.
For those of you who attended the workshop yesterday, I do hope you go on to paint more children very soon, don't wait too long or all of those good tips and ideas will be forgotten.
The cheesecake is all gone now, Terry was delighted that we left him some because its his favourite!
Once I have planned my next series of workshops for the new year and have added them to my website, I shall mention it on this blog, so until then, happy painting! and I hope to paint with you again next year.
The past few weeks have just flown by in a bit of a whirlwind and I have, I am afraid neglected my blog somewhat! I seem to have had a lot of deadlines, demos and workshops as well as some very important family time, with a lovely new arrival which I am thoroughly enjoying.
I had a lovely walk on Lythem St Annes beach on Saturday, its a lovely beach, particularly loved by dog walkers. The tide goes out for miles so the beach is vast, you can see tiny little figures way out on the water line and when the tide comes in, it rushes in so fast that people have been known to get trapped on sand banks, so you have to be very careful.
I have prepared my 20 paintings for the NEC show in Birmingham later this week. For those of you who don't know what the show is, its an art show designed to inspire people to paint, draw and be creative. I have been asked to demonstrate again this year for THE ARTIST & LEISURE PAINTER magazines on their stand, so that is where you will find me. I paint 5 paintings each day giving lots of tips and ideas along the way. This year my theme is 'figures' although I also have a couple of surprises planned to keep me on my toes.
