by Diane: Watercolors, brushes and rags workshop

At the November 2nd  ODFW and Oregon State Fish Hatchery and Research Center Fall Creek Arts and Crafts Festival there were no students who used my demonstrated idea in the morning.

Waly ( the surviving partner of high school class mate, Mike Mayer) myself
and co-teacher Cheryl French gather for a photo shoot by Ann Holyfield.
Waly is a successful designer of commercial needlepoint designs.
Recently he started doing custom work
 painting in acrylic on the backing.
This was his first experience with watercolors.
Unfortunately Crayola brand food coloring in glue
is different from artist quality paints. If he was really
serious about taking up watercolors, this workshop was not a good sample
of what the medium could offer him. 

I demonstrated how to fully saturate a brush by first spraying water on Crayola pan colors, then  making a puddle of water and paint on the palette.  The brush is rolled on its side to make it hold as much as it can possibly hold. And then the brush was ready to easily slide across the paper making shapes that look like watercolor paint.

 The number of brush fulls of paint to make the right concentration on the palette is guesswork.  After painting it on your paper and the estimate is incorrect, make the paint lighter by picking up excessive wet areas with a dry brush or rag. 

Also demonstrated how a dry corner of the rag dipped into the paint sucks up paint. Drying up excessive puddles on the paper prevents an irregular blooms as the paint dries. If desired the wet paint can be darkened by dropping more color into the paint before the paint is completely dry. 

I always learn more from these workshops than I think my students do.  For one, I learned that most students who come to these fairs just enjoy the labor of brushing back and forth gradually building their shapes. Every touch of their brush showed the scrubbing force behind the paint. Most of the students in the morning had no interest in trying a new way from how they painted maybe years before. Some were more joyfully engaged in care taking. Their clients' faces sometimes brightened with joy. They were loud and happy in no way wanting to concentrate on the painting process. Painting should also be a relaxed way to enjoy an activity with others as these care givers were doing.

The families with young children were engaged in introducing painting to their children as they had obviously painted with them before. This year's instruction on the use of brush and rag was less useful for both these families and care givers.


 I also learned from a seriously involved painter. Above is a painting done in about 15 minutes during lunch break by a watercolorist who did not take the morning watercolor class nor was she signed up to take my afternoon class. Because she was interested in looking at my stack of demo paintings, I invited her to see my demo and paint. She definitely knew how to incorporate my demo ideas. She had a considerable amount of painting experience. She dropped color into the background to make the impression of water.  She dropped purple spots on the body She motified the value with the rag, and in addition she knew she needed pencils and something to scratch into the paint.

The best part of the workshop experience was what I learned in doing the demonstration. I am excited to do more watercolors.