While I admire the art work of many artists, I somehow am especially interested in painting with watercolor paints, but have only fiddled around mostly on my own. Saturday, I had the joy of attending a watercolor workshop taught by Carolynn Wagler. First she had us experiment with four different kinds of color washes (upper page on the right). Then we started out with three free hand paintings on the lower right just trying to follow her example of forming cone flowers, northern lights over a house with trees and the moonlight gleaming on water. The last four paintings she had us use graphite paper to copy a sketch and then tried to help us see how we could shade the objects with different tones to add depth of detail.
This is Carolynn's painting of Buttercup, a local cow. Note the shadow of the daisy on Buttercup's nose. She showed us how to create the daisy and the shadow of the daisy, but painting Buttercup was our last painting of the day...our grand opus...and I was so tired from concentrating all day, I did not try to paint the daisy or the daisy's shadow. I was just happy to paint something that looked a little like Buttercup!
By Tuesday, I had recovered from all my concentrating on Saturday, and I looked up a photo of a colorful Bantam Rooster on Google images. Using a pencil I sketched out the general shape of the rooster and then began applying watercolors.
My three oldest granddaughters wandered in while I was painting and I invited them to join in the fun! We had a great time, but they took their work off to show their folks before I got a photo of their finished products.
While my Mr. Bantam is not as brilliant and glossy as his photograph, I did have a grand time painting him and am eager to practice and learn to become more skilled.
Are you practicing some skill that brings you joy?
Thanks Amy, for hosting Five on Friday and giving us the opportunity to share with each other in this format.
xx
Gracie
