colors

Watercolor bootcamp – part 2

~ MaryG ~ 17 Comments

This week our watercolor drill sergeant made us copy a colorful abstract collage. The point was to recreate each color as accurately as possible. It was really hard!

I did OK on the color matching but got disapproval for using “subpar” paper which created all those streaks. (I didn’t want to waste my expensive paper on what was essentially an exercise.)

The homework was to paint a still life comprised of colorful objects, getting the colors as close as possible. Again, hard.

Here’s my homework. I’m pretty happy with it although the yellow is not right. I think I went too light on the yellow because I knew I was going to paint those flowers over it. (It would’ve been too much work to mask out that whole flower area. )
Here’s what I was looking at—a collection of objects from China and Japan that
I happened to have in my house.

In other exciting news: I decided to move all my painting and drawing stuff out of the dining room and into an extra bedroom upstairs. So I guess I have a “studio” now.

Cute bedroom with nice light that nobody ever used
This is not ideal, but it’s better than the dining room. That card table I’m painting on was my parents. I think it was made in like 1960. It has some sort of faux leather covering that smells moldy. I need to get rid of the daybed and get a new, larger table.

Related post:

Watercolor bootcamp

Watercolor bootcamp

~ MaryG ~ 29 Comments

I’m now embarking on Year 2 of my watercolor “journey” 😉

After two sessions of “loosen up with watercolors,” I signed up for something called “watercolor bootcamp.” I probably should’ve taken this class first, but the description scared me off. It’s a watercolor techniques class with heavy emphasis on color theory, color mixing, etc. We spent a whole three-hour class mixing greys. There is homework. There are in-class critiques of the homework.

The very first homework assignment was to do a monotone (one color) painting of three objects with a clear light source.

I used Payne’s Gray.

For this week, we had to do a “complementary color” painting. So two colors that sit across from each other on a color wheel. (Red/Green; Yellow/Purple; or Blue/Orange)

I used only Rose (Red) and Phthalo Green to paint these hydrangeas.

I didn’t spring for all the expensive professional-grade paints that are on the syllabus. (There’s a syllabus!) I’m using what I have and will buy new stuff as needed. Jury is out on whether I’m going to like this class. It’s a bit intense so far. Bootcamp.

A single bloom

~ MaryG ~ 23 Comments

My husband very kindly ordered and planted a bunch of dahlia bulbs to fill in a dead area in our front garden.

Unfortunately, the deer kept eating them and only a single one bloomed.

It’s such a great color though—the one bloom.

Fuschia?

Raspberry?

Magenta?

What would you call it?