Sue Levy, 4/21 Watercolor Spring Colors

A great class for beginner to intermediate watercolor artists!

Designed for those of you who have a desire to paint in Watercolor.
* For those with some drawing ability to those just getting back to painting and for those of you more advanced in painting.

My classes are designed to inspire and help you have a better understanding of:

• How to control the water; too little; too much? Learn the tips.
• Work Wet and Wet: wet paper and wet brush or dry paper, dry brush?
• Values: we will do an exercise using one color to create the values from te very lightest to medium to the darkest values. You will experiment with this.
• Brushes: Let's talk about brushwork: how to use round brushes and flat brushes and explore each brush to make special marks. There are flat brushes, round brushes, detail brushes, rigger brushes, angle brushes, and rake brushes to use with watercolor. All of these depend on how much pressure you apply to your paper, how you hold your brush, etc.
• Very important are the elements of design and composition to help you create the best in your painting.

We will also explore the beautiful pallette of spring and talk about how to mix paints and how to best achieve luminous color! Much more will be covered as we go along in the exciting way to paint watercolor.

The class will cover:

• COLOR: Using the color wheel to create the beautiful rich spring colors. Using cool color from the color wheel to put distance going into the background. Working with the families of Yellow, Red, and Blue. Mixing color, ratio of water to pigment. 
• VALUE: A range of Light areas, middle, and dark areas
• SHAPE: finding the center of interest , making that the largest SHAPE, creating interest repeating shapes . Support shapes.
• EDGES: hard and soft , lost and found edges.
• All the Design and Composition Principles of Design

Materials List:

• Watercolor paint I use (warm (W), cool (C)):

W - cadmium yellow, C - lemon yellow, W - cadmium red,  C - alizarin crimson, W - cerulean blue, C - ultramarine blue or cobalt blue.

These are primary split palette colors using two yellows, two reds and two blues in a warm and cool of each color.

Additional colors I use :

W - yellow ochre or raw sienna, W - burnt sienna,  sap green, hookers green,  violet but I like mixing my own.

• Good watercolor paper such as Arches, 140 lb. cold press
• A board or something to tape your paper to or use a watercolor block (Arches or Canson Aquarelle) 
• Brushes: round brush #4, 6; flat chisel edge brushes 1/4 inch to 1/2 inch
• Old jar or Cool Whip container to hold water
• Paper towels 
• Photo references for you to choose the subject material you will be painting. We will be doing subjects of Autumn. Suggested subjects: trees in a landscape with a stream, a barn, etc.

This Watercolor Workshop is a casual class, all questions are welcome. Learn techniques in Watercolor; getting the maximum use of your brushes.

This class is geared toward students interested in learning the wonderful world of watercolor. Some drawing ability is preferred. For beginners to intermediate painters.

Maximum class size: 16
Minimum class size: 4

(Register here for the series or register for 4/7, 14, 21, and 28 sessions separately from the Class Calendar.)