BAL Workshop

Photos from the workshop

Burlington Artists League Watercolor Workshop

We started this with a rubber cement textured surface.  I did this by drizzling rubber cement on white paper, allowing it to dry, painting light color, allowing it to dry, drizzling more rubber cement, drying, more watercolor, drying, more rubber cement, drying, more watercolor (I usually do 3 - 6 passes of rubber cement and color).  After dry I used a rubber cement pick-up to remove the rubber cement, transferred my drawing, and started painting the chicken allowing some background texture and color to come through.  It of course needs more work and detail.  I will post it here as I work on it.

For this one I transferred the outline of the chicken.  I made registration marks so I could replace the drawing later and transfer the entire drawing.  I drizzled the rubber cement in a grassy pattern, allowed it to dry, added watercolor, allowed it to dry, added more rubber cement, allowed it to dry and so on for about 3 rounds.  I meant to keep the rubber cement on  as I painted the chicken but accidentally took it off.  I made the grass patterns in the chicken with negative space painting (would have been easier if I had left the rubber cement for a bit as I put the chicken in...).  It of course needs more work.

This chicken was about this far as I started in in another workshop.  I worked on the head for you showing you how to use white gouache to add light details.

I started this by transferring the drawing first - tape the drawing onto the paper, slip graphite paper underneath, trace the drawing and it transfers to the watercolor paper.  I do my original drawing on tracing paper and transfer them as needed often doing an image more than once.  I wet the background and leaves dropping in purple and drops of water to create 'blossom' textures.  After dry, I wet a petal and worked with purple (any color will do...) to create form and shadowed areas.  I only did a few petals as examples (if working on my own piece I would finish the petals completely in purple).  Then I used green yellow and brown to do the leaves (I wet them first).  Next I showed a few different areas on the background to show you several background options.  The top was done with indigo and a little yellow.  The bottom left was a yellow glaze and the bottom right was a rose glaze.   This of course is not complete. 

Plastic wrap texture.  I often paint and draw on these background or put them in spots on paintings as I work.  The process is to wet the paper, drop in color, place plastic wrap scrunching it and leaving it until it's dry.  Then it leaves a texture.

 This is a rubber cement textured paper with the rubber cement still on.  I did this by drizzling rubber cement on white paper, allowing it to dry, painting yellow, allowing it to dry, drizzling more rubber cement, drying, adding more watercolor various colors, drying, more rubber cement, drying, more watercolor (I usually do 3 - 6 passes of rubber cement and color).  After dry I will use a rubber cement pick-up to remove the rubber cement.  I need to do maybe another pass or two.

This painting started by transferring the drawing first.  I then started with wet-in-wet.  Wet the paper, dropped and guided various browns, keeping it slightly loose, paying close attention to the values.  After it dried, I added more details and values with watercolor, much less wet than the first pass.  I also added blue to the shirt and a little gray (mixed with brown and blue) to the head scarf.  I will continue with basically the same colors working on the values and the details.