Intermediate watercolor painting class: new cycle

Earlier this week i started the first of 10 classes in painting with watercolr aimed at somewhat more than rank beginner painters. The first two were a gas. I had intendied to work on still life for 2-3 sessions as i think that they are superb for teaching a variety of techniques and learning to see shapes rather than objects. I tend to run these classs as a democracy and by a scant margin (8-1) the class voted to move on to landscape painting half-way through the first 3- hour session..........sigh. 

So off to landscape world. We covered values, flat washes, graded washes, variegated washes andtackled  this simple figure in landscape painting. This allowed us to talk about and perform scraping back to white, tying a figure into the landscape, preserving whites, learning about reflections, and creating texture with splattering, spritzing and all sorts of shenanigans.

Here is my demo painting from Thursday replete with way too much techniquey stuff but pretty still pretty cool, if i must say so myself. 

"Lone Angler" (11"x15").

"Is It Me You're Looking For"

Here is the final product of the demo I started at the day-long workshop for WRAP about a month ago. It technically should be labelled a mixed watermedia painting as there are some small areas of  watersoluble crayons. It is about 17"x 20" on 300# hot press paper, Arches brand.

"Alone Together"

This painting has had its ups and downs, starts and stops, trials and tribulations, and even somebrief moments   of joy. The end result is definitely less than the sum of its pieces. In analyzing the entire process, i think the mistake I made at the very beginning set the tone for the entire process. I pickeda fairly  rough cold press paper.......i almost always use hot press for my figurative/portrait work. The surface threw me off from the beginning and from there, as they say, it was history.

I know when I go back in a few weeks it probably won't be quite the rubbish I feel it is now. It really is a bit of a shame as i was very enthusiastic about the pose(s). However, as i have said many times before, it is more about the process than the product. To that end this is a raving success as i can hardly enumerate the things i learned whilst pondering and painting this piece. Lastly, I found I really don'tlike painting  pieces that are this big.

So, here is "Alone Together" (17"x30"). Enjoy, comment, trash, and even praise if you are so inclined.