Learning from the Master
“Paint your mid-tones first, combining shapes and mixing colors. Then add your darks and lastly your lights.”
“Paint big shapes to catch the viewer’s eye, with no more than five values.”
“Catch the viewer’s eye at a distance, Lead the eye throughout the painting, and bring the eye to the area of dominance and hold it there as long as possible.”
Those are some of the things I learned last week when I attended a four-day workshop with Eric Wiegardt, my watercolor teacher, in Long Beach, WA. Each morning we watched Eric paint a demo painting, and then we tried to paint it ourselves. After a lunch break, we repeated this sequence.
It was an intense four days, but I think all eight of us students learned a lot. We also went out to lunch and dinner together several times, and enjoyed our time together. Everyone was very supportive. Eric’s a very good teacher, patiently repeating the fundamentals so we could grasp them.
I used the workshop to experiment with new techniques and subjects, and take some risks I don’t usually take. Here are some paintings I made in the workshop, in addition to the vase of roses above.
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