Inspiration Friday: Student Projects
One of my favourite things about teaching watercolour is having the opportunity to help others get excited about the medium. Watercolour can be so fun, but it's frustrating when you are trying to learn it and struggling. Sometimes all you need is someone to come alongside with a few words of guidance. Sometimes all you need is to see someone tackling the medium with energy and confidence. It happened to me a couple of years ago, and just being given permission to say, "I am going to enjoy painting, and try to paint like ME, without condemnation," was all the impetus I needed to break through barriers in my art. Since then I've had so much fun with watercolor, and grown a lot in my style and vision for my work.
I'm excited to be able to share a bit over the next few weeks from some of my watercolour students. The first batch of paintings I'm going to share come from my Skillshare "Fluidity in Watercolour" class, and are just a little, well, fruity! One of the first exercises in the class is to paint a simple object in a fluid way. My example was an apple, so many of the students painted apples, but we had a few other varieties of fruit, as well.
It's fun to see how different everyone's paintings can be, even on something so simple as a piece of fruit! See how adding wet-in-wet, fluid colour makes the apple look so juicy?
This piece has spatter that looks so fun, and a muted palette. I love the way the leaf just flows off in a soft edge.
Of course I love seeing the fluid techniques applied to other objects as well. Aren't these sketches great? This radish is a great way to use pink instead of an orange-red, and I love the way the colour just drips off the page. You have to be brave to let a painting drip like this!
My favourite of Sue's several fruit sketches has to be the papaya. We had a papaya tree in our yard in Papua New Guinea and the seeds look just like that. It's really neat to be able to get a realistic depiction while still keeping a loose feeling to the painting.
Bravo to all my students and I look forward to seeing more of their work as they share it on the student galleries on the web site. I'll be sharing more of their work over the next few weeks. My online watercolour class continues (600 students and counting) and you are welcome to join at any time. I am also working on a watercolour class that will focus more in-depth on painting florals in watercolour, and if you are signed up to receive my newsletter, you will be the first to hear when it goes live, AND receive a coupon code for 50% off the class price!
Sign up for my online "Exploring Fluid Watercolour" class on Skillshare here: http://skl.sh/1iWdJ1c
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