Chinese Painting: Looks so easy - but is it ?

Pauline Bull hosted the Chinese Painting Workshop today. Watching her paint the flowers and bamboo - it just seemed so easy. Her brush would just run away on the rice paper and produce the most delicate flowers and bamboo.

But is it easy ? I am sure the participants in todays workshop will agree that it takes a lot of practise to produce the results Pauline has.

The students patiently practising their strokes

They are beginning to get it after many hours practise

For the oil painters it seemed strange using the runny paint and floppy brushes

A demonstration of how to loosely hold the brush and let it flow over the paper

Simple flowers - quickly done

Demonstration by Pauline

Aquarelle, every Tuesday from 2 - 4.30pm with Marina

GLASS!

'A glass of rosé' by Constanza

 

Still working towards our 'Cocktail Calendar', we have been observing and then painting glass. How the light reflects on it, how it 'breaks' the image if you look through it. If you do that correctly you can paint the perfect suggestion! As you can see, above and below, most aquarellistas did it absolutely right: your brain immediately assumes it is transparent glass!

 

Rusty Nail (Calendar Preview) by Liz



 

And then some empty glass...

'Glass jar' by Nusch

 

 'Glass bottle' by Christiane

 

'Glass Still Life' by Brenda

 

'Glass Still Life' (from another angle) by Sandra

 

Glass Vase by Agnès

 

Much more was done, all work in progress that I keep for next time - but a big compliment goes to Örjan, who worked with watercolours for the first time and did such a great job on his 'washing 'n volume' exercise:

Volume & Light by Örjan

 



Aquarelle Tuesday - with Marina Kulik

Wet-in-Wet!

 Squall, a clever picture by Brenda Moorehouse: she combined the wet-in-wet technique with 'washing out' to create this tropical rain

 

Last Tuesday was our 'Rentrée' and we decided to work wet-in-wet for a change. Usually we work with wet paint on dry paper, now we made our paper soaking wet, and then dripped plenty of paint - with lots of pigment - on it, or painted it on it.
Some had an idea before they started and some just waited until the paint had dried to determine what they would actually make of it... It was very exciting and although this was more about the fun and the process than about the result, some paintings came out very very well...

An excellent landscape painting, with interesting light and shadows and beautiful warm wet-in-wet colours by Brigitte Jansen

Cathie van der Stel waits for inspiration to finish this -

do you see what it is going to be?

 

Yannick, a new member of our group, combined wet-in-wet with a very precisely detailed technique for the buildings

Cathy created a super wet-in-wet landscape - and with the help of lots of salt and a couple of lines suggested a very interesting foreground

Corine, another new Aquarellista, created this superb abstract landscape - with lots of things happening and a very interesting light

Jim as always approached the exercise in a more intelectual way, combined with 'feeling one' with the paint - and came up with this excellent fantasy image of 'the Fjords'

Model drawing by candle light...

Last Monday we had an extra Model Drawing session because Pim, though on the mend, is not yet working 100%. We used the time to do an experiment that actually worked out so well that we are going to repeat it coming Monday - drawing by candle light... The challenge is that not only you see less of what you are doing, you see also much less of the model. But what you see is touched by a warm and soft light... And everyone was much more able to concentrate and see and draw 'the light'. The results? Poetic! and very good: