December 22nd, SUNDAY WORKSHOP - Winter foliage in jam jars.

This is a late December workshop to give people a lovely day of art just before the Christmas rush. We'll be using lots of wet-into-wet painting technique and, later in the afternoon, we'll be mixing our media to create beautiful watercolours of seasonal foliage. You can see my examples and the process above. I have also added a mixed media example to give an idea of the afternoon's project.

Winter Foliage in Watercolour, workshop, Pimperne, Sunday 22nd December, 10am – 4pm.

First...

Place a small to medium sized set up of winter foliage, berries etc. (you can add two or three bought flowers if you like) to an interesting jam jar half filled with water (I'll have some Bonne Mamman type jars with me).
Mix up a plentiful pale wash, perhaps yellow ochre, cover your page except for the places you want to leave white, these will be your lightest places. Use your biggest brush for the smoothest wash.
As well as your wash mix, have ready on your palette all the colours you think you might need for the painting.

Make sure your wash has left you with a really nicely wet page - take the risk and make it wetter than you think you need.

Now using the other colours you've put out, paint them onto the wet wash. Let the colours flow - their intensity will fade as the colours dry so don't be afraid to use strong colour - keep taking those risks!

This is the moment to start another painting in the same way so as to have two on the go. It means painting no.1 has some time to dry (not necessarily fully dry as it's nice to work on a damp page as opposed to a soaking page - and you don't want to be working on the fully dry page yet).
As your page dries, you can add more colour. Remember that as well as painting things in, you're also trying to reveal lighter shapes (i.e. paint around them).
Gradually, as your page becomes drier, your painting can become more precise. Look at the jam jar and the stems as they travel through the surfece of the water. Look out for the rim of the jar as this may be a 'left light' place. You can dry your work (with the hairdryer) between layers when you feel you need more precision.
See my examples - enjoy the experiment!

More experimentally...using wax (or similar) resist and black pen.

Use some kind of resist (wax candle - I'll have some with me), white oil pastel or masking fluid if you have some. On your page, mark where you think your lightest places will be - there's an allowable inaccuracy here as you won't see your light places until you put your wash down!

As in the first work we did this morning, use a lovely wet wash, colour of your choice, to sweep across the places where you've put your resist...now you can see those light places!

Again work wet-into-wet and let the colours flow.

At this stage, dry your page well with the hairdryer. Now, using more of your candle resist or masing fluid, find some shapes that you wish to 'hold' at the colour they are and 'draw' them in with your resist. You can flow more wash over these shapes you've resisted and they will emerge as new 'left light' places.
You can experiment, try this on as many or as few layers as you feel works best.
Once the page is dry (or has been dried again with the hair dryer) introduce line with black pen for more detail and definition.

Next workshop January26th 2025, Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!