Additional 2025 watercolors from workshops

Here are a few other watercolors from workshops with Leigh Ellis.  In each workshop we worked from photos.  I did not take the photos, and the paintings are not replicas of the reference photos.  

Snow!

We worked on a winter scene of a forest with a stream in the snow.

• First a light sketch of the stream and surrounding trees.
• Then a splattering of masking for snow
• Add light wash for the sky and background trees
• Paint the dark foreground trees and their shadows on the snow banks
• Darkening the background trees and add shadows to the snow banks
• Painting the reflecting light on the stream and the shadows of the banks
• Darkening edges of the banks, rocks and trees         
• Create additional depth with shadows and highlights
• After the painting is completely dry, remove the masking 

        

Birds in winter and summer

Because we are so familiar with birds, getting many details correct is important:

• Size and shape of the head, body, tail and wings.
• Color of key characteristics that identify the species.
• Realistic body positioning when perching or flying.
• Correct habitat can also be important.

Birds are very round, and the illusion of roundness on a flat piece of paper is created by creating shadows and highlights.

The colors in the shadows can be cool or warm

• Cool colored shadows (bue-purple) indicate a winter day
• Warm colored shadows (brown-purle) indicate a warm summer day

GWS workshop with Iian Stewart

On Aug 16-18 2023,  I attended a three day watercolor workshop, hosted by the Georgia Watercolor Society at the Thomasville Center for the Arts.   The workshop “Painting Land, Sea and Sky” was lead by Iain Stewart, a sought after watercolor instructor.  

Iian is an avid sketcher, and he asked us to bring a sketch book to the workshop.  We used the sketch to make pencil sketches, take notes on design ideas, and paint studies and vignettes.  This is how every painting we did started.

A list of the watercolors Iian uses was suggested for the workshop.  I normally use just 10 colors, and mix what I need from these.  But I was interested in seeing how Iian would use these other colors, and this was my opportunity to try them: Cadmium Scarlet, Naples yellow, Undersea green, Cobalt turquoise, Phthalo blue turquoise, Verditer blue, and Lavender.  

Iian helped us improve our sketching and painting ability. I learned new techniques and was reminded of techniques I learned long ago but forget to use.  

Tomasville is a lovely historic Georgia city.  The downtown has several nice local shops, restaurants and drinking establishments.  While walking around we looked for the lost quail and one of the oldest live oak trees.  We enjoyed tasting some unique drinks at 1861distillery , had a wonderful meal at Chop House on the Bricks and took home some amazing chocolates from sweet cacao chocolates.  

My Introduction to marbling paper and cloth

I often use marbled paper in my home made books, however I had never made my own marbled paper.  Marbling paper is one of the classes the John C Campbell Folk School often has, but so far I had not been able to attend any of their classes at the school.  By chance I learned they were still conducting a few online classess, and marbling was one of them.  So I quickly signed up!

As part of the online class I received a kit that included a 11” x 14” marbling tray, paints, a surfactant to thicken the water, a mordant for the paper and cloth, and some  paper and cloth.

There were six people in the class which allowed the instructor time to work with each of us.  We had a short first meeting to review what the class would cover and to do all the prep work:  

• making up the carrageenan for the tray, fill the tray and cover it overnight
• making up the alum, the mordant for the paper and cloth.  Spray one side of the papers then hang to dry.  
• make 1” and 2” rakes; ½” comb for marbling
• prepare three colors of paint (yellow, red, blue) with distilled water

The next day the instructor walked us through testing the paints, and adusting their consistency so they would spread out on top of the carrageenan enriched water.  

Marbling patterns are created by dropping paint in specific patterns on the surface of the carrageenan, then using the rakes or combs to pull the paint out into various patterns.  

The instructor walked us through creating several classic marbling patterns, moving from simple to complex.  Once we had a pattern we were happy with, paper wa carefully layed down on the paint and then just as carefully lifted off.  Any extra carrageenan was gently rinsed off the paper and it was set aside to dry.  

• Stones (large drops with smaller drops inside) and Bulls eye (drops within drops)

• Get-gal (Using rake to cross both horizontally and vertically and Double Git-gal (using comb to cross twice horizontally and vertically)

  

• Ribbon (Git-gal one direction) and Spanish wave (wiggle paper lifting)
  

• Over marble (second printing with pattern at 90 degrees