Brand New Watercolor Pencil Workshop!

Last week's workshop was exciting for me. It was a new, expanded version of the introductions to watercolor pencils which I've been doing as part of the basic and intermediate nature sketching workshops for quite some time.

I'll still continue to introduce watercolor pencils in those classes, but if the students want detailed instruction, they'll be able to attend this new Watercolor Pencil Workshop for LOTS more good stuff.

In the past, the color session has only been a one-day thing, but this workshop extends the color instruction to two days, with time for many new and exciting projects. I took a chance and just barely touched on drawing basics ~ I figured that anyone brave enough to take watercolor pencil instruction would have at least the rudiments of drawing, and I was right (this time!). I had five students, two who listed themselves as beginners and three intermediates. The lovely thing was that they were all returning students who had taken nature journaling or basic sketching with me. Loved that!

One of my projects was to get my students sketching with ballpoint pens. If you are painting with watercolor pencils, an underdrawing done in pencil tends to fuzz and fade, but waterproof ink stays crisp and clear. In my new workbook for the first day, I included a page for them to try pencil, ballpoint, and waterproof fiber-tip ink.

Sketching in ink is pretty intimidating, but they gritted their teeth and bent to the task, finding it surprising rewarding.

The subject was a boringly brown eucalyptus seedpod. The assignment was to try the different underdrawings, then experiment with peculiar, "unnatural" colors to make it look good. The results were fascinating. Here are some photos I took of the process.

This got the students comfortable first with ink drawing, then with mixing colors from opposite sides of the color wheel (with which we started the class) plus thinking out of the box with regard to how to achieve natural colors. It's not intuitive to get brown from purple and yellow, red and green, or blue and orange.

At the same time, I was introducing the students to the many ways to pull color from the pencils: drawing into a wet spot, laying down color with the pencil then wetting it, and lifting color off the end of the pencil with the brush, as shown here.

You'd think a single assignment would elicit similar results, but this class produced the entire spectrum. Here are seedpods from all five students. There is one actual seedpod in the picture. Can you tell which one it is? (click for a bigger image).

We touched on a number of concepts over the course of the two days. One was how to depict a white subject so that it's not blah or just shades of gray. A good way to demonstrate what we actually see (and don't realize) was to place a white object on a brightly colored surface, then look at the color bounced back up onto its underside.

This sea shell set on a chartreuse band of color was definitely greenish underneath, and if you slid it across the bands of color, the effect of the changing colors was even more dramatic.

Here are some of the results the students achieved by shading white subjects with color/s.

I also thought my students would also enjoy learning how to make waterdrops. Susie Short has a wonderful tutorial on her website here. With her very generous permission, I included her page of instructions in my workbook (along with credits and her URL so my students can look up her website at home ~ there are LOTS of neat things there) and we produced some pretty juicy dewdrops, which can really liven up a flower or foliage picture. While it's intended as a watercolor technique, it adapts to watercolor pencils perfectly.

On the second day we were one student short (it was the first gloriously springish day we'd had, and she couldn't resist an invitation to go painting plein air). But the remaining four arrived raring to go. We tried out the dewdrops again, in order to confirm the technique, then got seriously into how to render fur and to realistically color trees, landscapes and foliage.

[BTW, in this shot of my classroom, you can see how I arrange tables for a small class. I can enter between the two tables for close-up one-on-one instruction from directly in front of each student].

We worked on brush technique and quality with my standby orchid project, then got down to business after lunch with our piece de resistance ~ watercolor pencil paintings of gorgeous red and yellow apples.

Each student had a different style and method of working, and it was fun to see how each approached her apple project. Here's an apple in three steps:

Watercolor pencils are notorious for not allowing white highlights to be added after you are finished, so we also experimented with resists, applied before coloring. I felt the "resist masks" used by serious watercolorists (the liquid kind you daub or paint on, then rub off later) seemed a bit daunting for beginning students, although I've used them for years, so we experimented with white china markers with a certain amount of success.

I'd never taught the technique of applying china marker resists before, and I still have some improvement to make on that. I think next time I will have the students do some tests with the china markers and watercolor pencils before applying highlights to their subjects. It's two different things to a) be able to do something proficiently and b) teach someone else the same technique. I learned a lot about teaching resists last weekend!

It never ceases to amaze me that most students will jump right in, applying colors, techniques, or things like the resist without making a test patch off to the side. I really encouraged color-testing this time, and I think the students got more predictable results. Here a student has done some color tests before starting, and is referring to them as she adds green to her apple. Good!

And here are their final apple results. These definitely look good enough to eat, don't you think? The third one from the left is the one underway in the photo above. And actually, those white resist highlights look pretty darned good for a first try!

As always, I ended the class with evaluations. I was delighted with the answer one student gave to the question "What is your favorite medium?" She said "It was pencil... but I'm becoming a convert to ballpoint and also really enjoyed the waterproof fiber-tip pen."

I was also pleased with one response to a question asking them to tell me about their experience of the class: "I loved this class. It was great fun to learn how to use the pencils, waterbrush, china white, etc. I felt more confident after all working together on the same structured project instead of being told to just pick something and paint it without a clue at how to proceed."

This encourages my opinion that people learn best and most confidently when given specific goals to accomplish and specific instructions on how to achieve them. Once you have the technique under your belt, you can go any direction you want with it.

My next workshop is another new one: Sketching Wildlife. It will be May 2-3, starting at the Siskiyou Field Institute's Deer Creek Center (in Selma, OR) with a day mastering sketching techniques for drawing animals ~ fur, feathers, birds and mammals, and moving subjects, etc. The second day will be spent at Wildlife Images Rehab Center, at Merlin, OR, putting that new knowledge to work drawing raptors (hawks, eagles, owls), bears, wolves, foxes, and whatever strikes the students' fancy. This workshop should be a real kick! I've been creating the workbooks for it all month, and finished them last week, ready for printing.

Check it out here. Then come join us. It should be great fun!

Gotta go. There's a Pacific Treefrog pair croaking amorously by the pond outside my studio door, and it's almost 7pm and I'm starving. Ciao!

Sketching at the Black Sheep

I was supposed to have a workshop this last weekend, but only 3 signed up, so I reluctantly canceled. I'll be teaching the same workshop, Basic Nature Drawing, again in July, so perhaps they'll sign up again, with a lot more company.

Since I had this unexpected bonus of time, I used it to catch up on things -- like reassembling my kitchen from its construction orgy last week. I finally have most of the stuff into the new cupboards.

It still isn't done, as I have a huge cedar "plank," 6'x3'x3" sitting in my yard on sawhorses, wrapt in a tarp against rain and snow, awaiting my ministrations as sander. A huge task. It's still too wet and cold to deal with. Maybe next week! The plank is destined to be a counter/bar, and since my house is pretty rustic, it should fit right in.

And on Sunday, I went to The Black Sheep Pub again to sketch the Celtic Jam Irish musicians. I've been experimenting with design elements, and I really like how this major sketch came out (I did a couple of small ones I didn't scan in). The musician on the left, one of my favorites, turned his chair, left and came back then switched to playing the "bones" while I was trying to draw him, so he ended up just holding his guitar in the sketch. I love how he dresses the part, in the old-fashioned pin-striped shirt with its simple buttoned collar, the green vest, and that hat. I could only see the girl's head, with that wonderful hat and hair, and I THINK, in retrospect, that she was playing a different instrument. I only got a glimpse of it, and I think it was tear-shaped instead of a violin shape. Ah well...... There were ten of them playing yesterday, seven men and three women. This is just the ones that were closest (and somewhat visible).

When I visit one of my groups, EverydayMatters, I'm always entranced with the heavily designed pages/drawings people do in their journals. Up to this point I've been fairly simple in my renderings, mostly without backgrounds. So maybe I'll give this concept a ride in future entries. The box/line around it really does hold it together!

My Intermediate Nature Drawing workshop is weekend after next, the 21st, so I'll post that next time.

Journaling & Nature Sketching ~ February 7-8, 2009

I gave a journaling workshop on Feb 7 & 8. I was a little nervous because we had two different meeting places for the weekend. I'd never given a workshop in the Senior Center lunchroom, our Saturday venue, and I was afraid it would be clackety. But the big windows and cheery atmosphere proved to be a big plus (and with no echoes) so it worked out great. Here are my students in a composite photo. Remember you can click on photos to get a larger view.

Day 1
In the journaling workshop, we focus on "sketching in your journal" on the first day, and "journaling in your sketchbook" on the second day. So the first day incorporates Beginning Drawing. But because time is limited, it can only be taught in an abbreviated form.

This may take students up only a step or two if they're real beginners. But at least they can learn the principles, and if they practice they'll improve greatly.

This first day helps students learn to plan pages that will look good, using free-form templates to draw areas into which to write. Matching the shape with the item they have drawn (in the photo above you can see a free-form template's faint outline), this shape allows them to either make an interestingly-shaped paragraph or lovely curving lines of text.

I provided a selection of beautiful but fairly simple seashells, and I think some of the students surprised themselves with both their drawings and their writing. The writing on this first day was unguided, because we were just feeling out the process of creating and combining journaling and sketches.

Some of the writing results were very evocative, and I realized I had a talented bunch of writers in the class. The drawings were quite good, too, especially for mostly-inexperienced beginning artists.

Take a look at some of the results here. I wanted to post more, but they take a lot of time to prepare, (as I demonstrated in a previous blog) and I only had time to ready a few of them.

I was very pleased when one of the students pulled out a digital camera to photograph her shell so that she could work on the pattern and color later. This is an excellent habit, one I use all the time, and it can really enhance your capability for adding details to or painting your sketches later on at home.
I provided a sample "fun font" for the students to use to create a title for their page.

Our ending critique for the day gave everyone new ideas about ways to tackle a journal sketch and entry, and they were vocal with praise and admiration for the page designs the others had produced ~ and the wildly varied approaches to the writing. It was definitely a successful first day.

Day 2
The second day is sometimes met with nervous palpitations by students who have never written a poem, haiku, or a guided creative paragraph.

Since I don't provide journals for this class, students have to bring their own ~ and every journal on Day 2 was different. There were large ones, small ones, spiral bound and book-bound journals. I provide heavy pages in the back of the workbook for students to use if they decide they don't like the journal they brought. I always request that students bring unlined journals, but a few lined ones generally show up anyway. If students want to use them, they may. However, I discourage this because the lines seriously compromise a sketch.

The first assignment, after an introduction and demonstration of the way to approach the project, was to create an evocative paragraph from their choice of four simple sentences-and-photos provided in the workbook. They drew from the photos, designed their pages with the free-form templates, then created their paragraphs. When they had finished, I asked them to read them aloud, and the entire class was entranced by the readings ~ wow! Some of us were in tears by the end. Here are some of their creative pages.









We added other things to the pages later: haikus,





experimental borders, etc. I showed them how to cut and paste to mask booboos and attach ephemera. I provided colored sand and a foolproof technique to add a sample.

I worked alongside them, creating a whimsical page about a worm. I demonstrated details of using rubber stamps, simple spot illustrations, attaching sand, using watercolor pencils for quick touches of color, and creating colorful borders and dividers to enliven a page (check out the example).

The students also tried their hand at illuminating initial caps, a cool way to give an average-looking page a real boost. Two of the students had calligraphy backgrounds, and one of them showed us the beautiful and exceedingly easy way to outline words, shown here.

I always enjoy having advanced artists and journalist in my classes. They often are happy to share with the rest of the students the techniques they use, and I encourage this if it fits within the time frame and other limitations of the workshop.

By the end of the day, most of the students had tried most of the techniques, and several had added circular patches of sand to their pages. There's one by my earthworm, above, in case you wondered what that round thing is. And here's a close-up of one produced by a student.

Very soon, now, I'll be posting my new workshops for summer ~ some of them are still in the scheduling phase ~ and I'll try to remember to put up a notice here when I get them posted. Keep in touch!

About that slideshow....

If you were keeping track, last week you'll recall that I had a really spiff slideshow up on my blog, and was trying to figure out how to move it to the right panel as a permanent display. I made the slideshow at Slide.com, and I had read their permissions and conditions more carefully than I usually do, but was still caught by surprise when I clicked on one of my images to enlarge it and encountered this invitation: "Grab the code below to add this picture to any web site, like Craigslist, Myspace, Xanga or your blog!," it said.

I don't want to seem naive here. I KNOW you can right-click on most pictures (ones which haven't been purposely protected from that) to copy and snitch them. I've borrowed a few myself to use temporarily as resource materials when creating an illustration. I've never copied someone else's work or photo straight across, of course, because that's an infringement of their copyright, but I have referred to a borrowed photo to get anatomy or color correct on a piece I was creating.

Actually, I would expect an occasional lift/borrow of a photo of mine. But to see an INVITATION to take it really threw me. It seemed to be a message to any viewer from ME saying I WANTED people to take the pictures, which is not my intention at all since my only purpose was to use the slideshow as a gallery to show potential clients my style and scope.

So I took it down. If anyone who reads this can guide me to the part of the Slide.com agreement that states they plan to do that, I'd really like to read it. I don't have time to plow through that lengthy agreement again just now, but I sure wonder if I missed a paragraph or something -- or if they just do it "because they can."

Nuff ranting, I suppose.

I just finished a two session workshop on nature journaling this afternoon, and I'll be posting the blog about the class (great fun!) within the week, I expect. They produced some really excellent work.

Birds at Redstone Arsenal, Huntsville, Alabama

[The slide show has been removed. I left up the original posting with explanatory notes in red. Here's the original posting:]

I'm experimenting with a widget. Below, in the slideshow, are some illustrations I created for a birding trail at the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama. I just discovered if you run your cursor over the picture it comes into focus better and the title I typed in for it pops up! WoW!

Sorry -- I took the slideshow down.


Why? Click on the graphic to get a bigger view. It's kind of fuzzy since it's just a printscreen shot, but I think you can read it.

I discovered late last night when I clicked on my slide show image to get a larger view of the screech owl, that Slide.com ENCOURAGES people to grab your pictures and use them any way they want. When you click on the image of the PrintScreen here ~ be sure to read the print in the blue box!

They were begun in pencil then manipulated in Photoshop. Actually, after many hours of experimenting, some of the later ones were done entirely in Photoshop, from the rough sketch to the finish, using a Wacom tablet and stylus.

If you watch the slide show for a moment, you'll see a grouping of birds, then closeups of the birds shown in the group. They manufactured then positioned etched aluminum signs of the groupings at key points along the trail (at the edge of an open meadow, inside the forest, etc., where people might expect to see those birds. The trail is solely for the pleasure of the people living on the base, because it isn't open to the public. I'VE never even walked the trail!

I'm pretty pleased with these. I'm going to see if I can transfer this slideshow over to the right side of the page so it doesn't scroll down and off. WELL, MAYBE NOT!!!! But I haven't figured out how to do that yet.....

Sorry about this -- but maybe we can all learn a lesson.

That bit of information ~ that they'd suggest photo "sharing" ~ was not obvious in the Slide.com agreement (if it was there at all), which I DID read fairly carefully (more carefully than most, I suspect). I certainly didn't see a note mentioning that they would suggest, encourage ~ and actively enable ~ people to lift your pictures!

And my education continues....

Intermediate Nature Sketching

I've been giving workshops long enough now that I'm starting to get continuing students from previous classes. The Intermediate Nature Sketching class last Sunday was a good example, with three students from previous classes and one new student. There was a real anomaly as well ~ three lefties in the class and only ONE right-handed student! (BTW, the lefties were all returners. Does that mean anything? Naw! Surely not!). There they are in the class photo above, all busily left- and right-handing!

It really made me think about how I design my workbooks, because being right handed I have somewhat heedlessly set up the books to be used by right-handers when, with a bit of planning and forethought I can make them equally well-designed for either-handers by, for instance, putting examples ABOVE the area to be drawn in (instead of BESIDE, where they may be covered by a drawing hand) and placing the drawing area in such a way that neither right- nor left-handers have to draw with their hand resting on the plastic comb spine (not really comfortable). It took awhile for that to sink in, but I paid especial attention to it in the upcoming new Nature Sketching With Color workbooks for next weekend. They're not perfect yet, but they are considerably better.

DAY 1
The workshop went pretty smoothly considering it was a first run for a couple of things. We warmed up by drawing shells, and since this is an intermediate class I had the students working to use the arc of their hand, and paying particular attention to details of proportion. They did well, as shown in the collection of their shell-drawing efforts above.

This class teaches a collection of techniques: how to deal with 3-D shading with regard to cylinders, spheres and planes; seeing and utilizing negative space; a basis for creating realistic leaves, drawing believable eye, and any number of other things.

The workbooks are invaluable for this, as they provide the students with outlines within which to work on specific skills. Sure, the students could draw the outlines to work inside, but that would take up a large percentage of the time allotted for the exercise, and they wouldn't learn nearly as much. I've never gotten any complaints from students about having to work inside these outlines, so I think they are filling their purpose well.

After lunch I pulled out my piece d' resistance, the box of cattails which I had so carefully labored to keep from exploding a few weeks ago (see previous post). They made the trip well, and, in fact, survived being taken home and returning with the students without showing any signs of wear.

The cattail project page in the workbook is very detailed because the students take the cattail home to work on overnight (sometimes they don't have time for homework, but if they do it is much more rewarding and they learn a great deal by trying to puzzle things out for themselves).

We worked on the cattails an hour in class ~ I did a drawing right alongside them so that I could show them ways to work on the texture and shading.

Part of the homework assignment was to add some fluff to the cattail in the drawing, using a reference photo in the workbook of a partially exploded cattail.
An exploding cattail picture is more visually interesting, and I wanted them to get some practice combining photo-reference material with a sketch. Be sure to click on the images to see a larger version of how they worked out the problem. In order at left are: Jan's, Lynns, Kathleen's and Randy's cattails. Nice, huh?

That evening, I finished my cattail, too, scanning it into Photoshop during the process, then taking the series to class the next morning so the students could see how I worked out the problems. That's the 3-step series at right.

DAY 2
We critiqued the cattails as soon as everyone had arrived the next morning, discussing the problems they ran into with the fluff. (I had let them deal with that without much instruction in the workbook. Some of my most useful learning sessions have been when I had to piece together how someone else got a certain effect.)

The second day was spent learning how to draw realistic fur on animals, practicing quick ways to rough in a drawing by drawing PAST it then filling in the inner parts, putting highlights and bounce reflections on eyes and considering how the eye highlights relate to highlights and shadows on spheres, etc.

I had them drawing mostly with ballpoint pen ~ this is useful in forestalling the "sketchy" drawer. Since the lines can't be erased, they don't get made in the first place, leading to a much more "conscious" drawing. And when you're super-conscious of each line you draw, you learn a lot faster.

Because the ballpoint can produce a whole range of tonal values from light gray to black black, it has many of the same drawing qualities as a pencil. After the initial OMG reaction, students often quickly come to prefer it over pencil for sketching (I sure do!). In fact, in the evaluations at the end of the class, Lynn, in response to "What is your favorite medium?" wrote: "pencil, now converting to ballpoint pen!"

After lunch, for our final project, I got out my special effects kit and taught the students how to create white hairs and whiskers against black, then we did the mushroom shown here. They were SO pleased with the results, and so am I. One student declared that she's going to do this as a project with her grandson when he comes to visit. Sounds to me like the perfect fun thing for him to do with Granny.

So there is is. A very satisfying workshop for me, and I think for the students, too.

Next weekend is my Nature Sketching with Color class. I finished the two workbooks just last week and sent them to bro David, who has already printed and FedExed them back. They should arrive on Monday or Tuesday with enough time for me to write up the detailed class plan schedules I work from.

I've tried classes both loosely and tightly structured, and when they're loosely structured the students sometimes don't get a chance to try a technique because we've dallied too long on a previous one.

So I try to keep things moving right along by using the schedule ~ I always know about where in the curriculum I am supposed to be. That's my left brain talking, I guess!

Till next time!