LESSON PLANS WINTER 2022 (1st half). Lesson 4 working with wash and pen.

In this lesson I'm asking my students to look at a very similar subject to the previous lesson, but to make more of a set-up but placing the stems in a vessel in front of them. They'll be working first with loose watercolour and then introduce pen to find the details.

Winter term, 1st half 2022. Lesson 4. Seed heads and stems.

Wash and pen (as opposed to pen and wash!).

· Set up a lovely arrangement of seed heads and autumn berries/foliage in a nice vessel (could be a glass jar or a nice vase).

· Have your paints ready on your palette. If your set-up is tonal rather than colourful, use a mix of colours to make the tones you need (remember our session win which we mixed colour pencils to create neutral tones rather than characterful colours).

· Begin with lots of watery loose painting. Loosely describe what you're seeing, drawing with your brush, letting the colours run together.

· Work wet into wet. Drop stronger colours into your work. You’ll find the essence of your subject exists on the page in loosely painted terms.

· Let the paint dry.

· With your black pen, begin to pick out some of the detail on top of your paint. Work as lightly as you can to start with and increase pressure on the pen for dark thicker lines when you’re confident about them.

· Work back in with watercolour for some darker tones, and then again with pen.

Next lesson, last lesson of this block of five sessions: Find a landscape image/drawing/photo and work from it using the same techniques as we have used in this session OR bring the same set-up as today’s and paint it using pure watercolour technique (no black pen!).