Watercolor Pencil Workshop 8-1-09

I haven't given this workshop in a while ~ since April, actually ~ so it was fun to have a fresh run at it. It was a small class, just four students, so it was quite intimate and enjoyable.

DAY 1
Three former students attended, two of whom brought their own watercolor pencils to use. Normally I provide all the pencils, but I don't mind if students bring their own as long as they keep them separate from mine, since sorting them out at the end of the workshop could be a headache.

After a spin around the color wheel, we made a brief sortie into Right-brain contour drawing to get started on the right track. In this class, we only do a little drawing, concentrating instead on learning how to use the watercolor pencils effectively.
The class has some "coloring book" aspects, since there isn't time to do a lot of drawing AND coloring instruction in a two-day workshop. So I provide most of the drawings and they practice the techniques and processes of coloring them.

Still, it's nice to do at least some projects from start to finish. So our subjects for the contour drawings were seashells, which they later would come back to color with the watercolor pencils after gaining some experience on subjects in the workbook. Here's one of the drawings.

Students often get hung up on finding exactly the right watercolor pencil to use, so I chose their next subject to be totally boring, color-wise ~ a eucalyptus seedpod, dark brown and rather plain. I encouraged them to try mixing opposite colors from the color wheel to get different shades of brown. I also suggested adding touches of unexpected colors for interest, and they took me very literally. Click on the thumbnails here to see the larger images. They're WILD.

Another area which causes either a lot of trouble or terminally boring results is how you shade white items. Gray should be the last resort. When a white subject is near a colored one, the color reflects back onto the white subject with interesting results. You can experiment with this yourself ~ put a white object on a colored surface, and notice how the color reflects up onto the white. In the picture here, you can see the strip of colors I provide to play with these effects.

I gave them interesting white subjects to draw: when I was in Idaho in June I collected a LOT of white bones in the desert, picking them up from where they had been bleaching amidst the fragrant sagebrush plants, crystal-lined geodes and horned lizards. Here's Rachelle sketching a muledeer's jawbone.

What a great job they did on the reflections!






By the way, these were drawn with ballpoint pens, no pencil or erasing.







Then, to get back to a more genteel subject, I taught them how to make dewdrops (or raindrops, take your pick), and we finished off the day by first practicing some textures in ballpoint pen, then going back to color the seashells they had drawn earlier. They could either use the photo for color, or an actual shell from my collection. Here's what those looked like when they were finished:

Fran had to leave at noon to go to her job, so she didn't get to color bones and shells. Fortunately, she was reasonably experienced, and she was able to pick up much of what she had missed by working extra hard the second day.


DAY 2

We started out the second day with another run at the dewdrops. I always do the dewdrops twice because the first time around the results are usually not terrific, and a brush-up the next morning usually produces much nicer results.

Open your coloring books, ladies! On the second day we got into color intensively, learning how to make landscapes, ocean, and water in the first few exercises.

About this time, students who haven't used paintbrushes much before have progressed from just getting color onto the paper to trying to finesse the strokes, so I do an intensive project with a spotted orchid to work on this aspect.

This exercise also teaches a quick, easy, and very effective way to make a background which is suitable for just about any subject. The students produced some nice results, and Gayle used what she had just learned to add a dewdropwith some reflected colors, both pink and green, to her orchid. Be sure to click the orchid below left for a close-up look!

One of the returnees, Marlene, is something of a workshop junkie, and she has learned the value of taking notes during workshops. (It's amazing how much you can forget after leaving the class even with my nice workbooks to refer to later). She incorporated her notes into her journal, along with simple little sketches and paint demos to remind herself of important points.

I wanted to quickly cover fur, tree bark, and sunlight on foliage before starting our final project, so we did our Five Color Bobcat, with students selecting five different brown-orange-yellow-red colors with which to make the fur vibrant (if you watch the hair ads on TV, you'll have noticed how they hype multiple color hi-lights for beautiful hair? Same thing.)

Finally they were ready for their Final Project, for which the local market had produced lovely nectarines. They spent the last hour of class busily coloring their nectarines and practicing ways to add highlights. Don't these make you hungry?





I am proud of this bunch of students. They really rose to the occasion!

My next posting (soon, I hope) will be of the teachers workshop I did yesterday at the North Mountain Nature Center. I taught 13 teachers/volunteers/staff of the nature center how to teach the Observing Nature course, a half-day journal/sketching course for young people. I'll teach it again next week, but this was the first run and I'm happy to say it went without a snag (except that I forgot to hand out my evaluations until half of the participants had already left. A Freudian slip?)

Costa Rica Nature Journal/Sketching Workshop ~ 7

Day 3 of our workshop. COLOR ~ the workshop day we've been building up to!

Before it even began, starting at 5:45am, Jocelyn, Marilyn and I went with Gerardo on a birding trip while Kathy caught up on her beachcombing. (Kathy would have to leave early the next morning, missing the last day of class, and she hadn't spent enough time with the waves.)

The birds were very forthcoming, and Gerardo, tirelessly searching the forest fringe with both naked eye and heavy scope, showed us many special birds (see my list above ~ how about a bare-throated tiger heron? or a green-breasted mango, a hummingbird, with young at the nest!)!

Back at the lodge, after our usual gorgeous breakfast, we prepared to work. Usually my classes contain students who haven't yet worked up the nerve to color their sketches. Not this class! Kathy had arrived in class the first day with scenic watercolors in her journal. Jocelyn and Marilyn had already been watercoloring their journal sketches with great verve. But none of them had much experience working with watercolor pencils, so, after a gentle critique of the previous afternoon's homework (two or more journal pages with attached ephemera plus an improved poem) we launched into the watercolor pencil workbook, Color Your Sketches, with vigor.

Each day of my workshop has its own workbook. I have designed the workbooks to fulfil several purposes: 1) to augment and give background for the instruction I give in class, 2) to provide a place to make notes, experiment with techniques, and in some cases to actually do an assignment, and 3) to give the student a concrete resource to take home from the workshop. Often there is additional material in the workbook for the student to continue working on later. My students appreciate these workbooks a great deal. This workshop has three workbooks: Sketch in Your Journal; Journal in Your Sketchbook; and Color Your Sketches.

We began with a brief journey around the color wheel, trying out swatches and blending colors to get familiar with the use of the pencils. Then we added color to see how that changes the hue, intensity, and appearance of the colors. I showed the students some different ways to get color effects, then I handed out worksheepts and we did a step-by-step exercise adding color to a gorgeous spotted orchid.

Since the students already had experience in watercolor, this class went more quickly than usual so I handed out a sheet of foliage patterns to be pasted into their journals for quick reference. They practiced foliage patterns for awhile. Tomorrow's assignment would be a beach landscape, which would use these patterns (or take-offs on them), so the practice was useful preparation for rendering palm trees and other types of foliage.

By now, we were all well acquainted, and having a great time chatting and working together. All three of my students had joined other resort guests the night before in a raucous card game, joined by a fearless praying mantis which stole the show. I was a bit sorry I'd missed the fun, but mostly I was pleased that my students were enjoying themselves at all levels: the beautiful surroundings, the sketching and journaling opportunities, the classes themselves, and the other guests

The homework assignment for tomorrow would be to produce two or more well-designed journal pages including some foliage, with color added to at least one of the pages. I was doing the homework as well as the students ~ I'm of the opinion that an instructor's efforts can serve as good demonstrations of techniques, styles and ideas, as long as the production of it doesn't get in the way of the student's instruction. In other words, if the students need my input, I don't work on anything during class. If they are progressing nicely at their own pace and don't need help, I use that time to color my own sketches or to make examples of what is needed for the assignment

After class, I took up my journal, water bottle, and camera and headed up the Carablanca Trail (see the map) to see what I could see. There were still a couple of hours of light, and I wanted to get misted by a waterfall and see if I could spot some wildlife. Check out my journal page to see what I encountered!

Guests are given a map of the El Remanso forest trails and beach when we arrive, and I glued it onto a page in my journal so that I would always have it handy. So far on this stay at El Remanso, I'd only been down to the beach, so a forest walk was high on my list of adventures.

The forest here is beautiful, with giant buttressed trees ~ buttresses are fin-like ridges at the bases of trees . Buttresses spread out like fingers, helping to support the tree over a wider area of ground. There are lots of palms and vines. Up in the trees you are likely to see monkeys if you are out for even a little while. Agoutis, like long-legged, long-toed rabbits (see my sketch), browse in the underbrush, and peccaries (wild pigs) roam the forest in groups of up to forty or fifty. There's no need to be afraid of them if you don't threaten them.

Flashes of red in the forest are likely to be passiflora flowers. They are about 4" across and look like brilliant scarlet stars hanging on vines. Insects and frogs fill the air with chirps and buzzes and high buzzing whines ~ with ventriloquistic qualities that make them next to impossible to track down.

By now, it was almost dark, so I got out my little flashlight (it fits on the bill of a cap, and makes lots of light) I got back to the lodge in time for a mango smoothie and lots of good conversation with my estudientes and the other guests before dinner.

NOTE: Kathy, Marilyn and Jocelyn, Adriana, Gerardo and others: I'm telling this the way I recall it and from notes in my journal. I may not always get it right, or you might want to add something to the tale, so please feel free to comment on ANYthing, with observations, your own tidbits, or corrections if I'm wrong about something. I value your input.