ART DEMO

I was asked to give a short demo to a local arts organization I belong to.

“Hmmmm, what can I do that will keep people occupied for an hour or so?”

I decided to take the demo I had started at the art fair and another painting begun a while back, also a floral, and show the group two different supports (Arches 140 CP and Lana 140 HP) and two different ways of painting a flower.

Above is the basket of mums from the set ups I did back in November. What drew me to this picture is the shadow – (but can I make it lively and colorful? - that’s always hard).

On the painting of the mums (below) you can see my notes on the masking tape around the painting – I like to make notes of the colors used so if I don’t get back to it for a while it won’t be a guessing game when I restart it. If I don’t tape down, then I’ll write either on the back of the painting or on the photo I’m painting from. This is on Arches 140 CP. I started with an overall wash on the flowers of Quin. Gold and Hansa Yellow, then used Raw Sienna, Q. Gold and Burnt Sienna on the basket.

Basket in progress:

My plan for the demo was to work first on the mums and basket and then, if there was time left, I’d work on the rose.

There was a pretty large turn out, think I counted 26. The group is made up of artists painting in various media, so some of them were quite interested in the watercolor while others were not. However, I did get some nice comments on the presentation. One lady said she enjoyed it even though she did not paint in watercolor. One lady, an oil painter, was horrified to learn that we watercolorists turn our paintings over, wet them down and iron them to make them flat again!!!

After working on the basket of flowers, I only had a few minutes to show a couple of petals on the rose. (Think maybe I talked too much and didn’t paint enough).

This rose (below) is on Lana 140 HP and is done differently from the flower basket. With this one I painted petal by petal, very wet with just a touch of color; a few got darker than planned, but that’s life! I will finish this one up with a darker background (I think???) and post it “whenever”!
Rose – in progress