Aquarelle, Tuesdays from 2 - 4.30pm with Marina

Working like Shirley Trevena:

Breaking the Rules... Part II

Last Tuesday the Aquarellistas we watched the second part of the great DVD about Shirley Trevena. This time she finished a watercolour painting that she created before, and finishing she did - in her exciting unconventional style, 'destroying' some beautiful parts, making them even more beautiful, in a perfectly balanced composition. 

We continued working on the existing paintings (and I had put those behind closed doors so that everyone had some distance after a week) and added a fresh bunch of tulips!

 

In Shirley-style this is absolutely possible, because it's all about composition and daring to do out-of-the-ordinary things...

 

This Tuesday we are going to finish our compositions...

 

...and we're going to view the last part of the video this Tuesday...

...but as you can see from the cutouts...

 

...the paintings are quite interesting already!

 

 

These are not all paintings but you get the point! Next week the full report on the results of this fun project that we learned so much from!!

Aquarelle Tuesdays 2 - 4.30pm

Working like Shirley Trevena:

Breaking the Rules...

Last Tuesday the Aquarellistas started with the first part of a DVD that Agnès kindly lent us. A film in which we see the lovely Shirley Trevena set up a watercolour painting, in her own, breathtaking and unconventional style.  

Part of the still life we used

After the first chapters of the film (we'll see the other part next time) we set out working in the same, free style, meaning that we skipped 'drawing first', as well as the idea that everything needs to be neat, or planned...



 ...we sprinkled paint and water on things, we combed, brushed and sponged our work, we used plumes instead of brushes, we dabbed with kitchenpaper, we scratched with watercolourpencils over sanding paper, on our work...

...well, I can't remeber it all, but we got dirty and clearly we all had a great time experimenting and purposely messing around with the materials!

Also, we concentrated on composition, in the Shirley-way: we didn't care about perspective, but made our composition work for us, using colours, contrasts and shapes from a still life as our leading principle...

The first results (but, like Shirley we will work long hours on this project to get everything out of it) are exciting!

 

 We have not taken the work home like we usually do, to finish it there, no we left it in the Hangar and will go on nex time.

We'll see the rest of the movie - which deals with finishing your painting, finishing the composition by 'destroying' parts and more...

The pictures shown here are just parts of the paintings that have been created

As you can see they are all interesting and full of contrast and spontaneous shapes.

And still very different from each other!

They will change completely in the coming weeks...