Skip Lawrence Workshop ~ Day 2, Tuesday ~ Watercolor by Texas Daily Painter Nancy Standlee

Watercolor approx. 12" x 10


Watercolor Approximately 21" x 14"

Today it was about "A Lot and a Little" and Balance. Skip Lawrence presented a slide show giving examples of famous paintings to show a simple approach to design and in a short, short summary for example if you have a lot of busy, put in a little calm or if you have lots of large shapes make sure to add a few small shapes.
We could paint whatever we wanted but apply some of the ideas he presented in the demo and lecture with the admonition "Don't do what you always do, try something else." Today I began adding some pure clean colors and no opaque but I could use black and white as pure colors then have the rest of the painting in neutrals. I must admit these two looked a little blah and I did add a little color enhancement in Photoshop Elements.
In the critique at the end of the day, Skip liked the top painting better and one of the reasons the bottom one was the flowers at the neck looked too realistic and he wanted the figure to go into the background more.
What really happened on the top one was the result of a very sad portrait and I didn't care what happened to it and just started painting some figures and making marks. On the bottom one I began on a clean white sheet of paper with some drawing in pencil and charcoal and it was more labored. Maybe I need to start painting over old paintings? Some in the class are using acrylics. I know one thing for my own work, after using acrylics for awhile....I really like acrylics and I'm fighting the watercolor trying to get them to act like acrylics. Skip uses lots of watercolor pigment with little water. I finally brought in some oil painting bristle brushes today and I imagined my little watercolors were screaming without their little soft sables. Skip did say that for his larger work he does use acrylics but he can paint a full sheet figure with watercolor and it can make it do tricks like an acrylic. I can't. I think I may remove that "yellow hand/arm" tomorrow in the lower painting. It's definitely a bother to me.
Watch for a slide show later in the week of Skip's work and demos.

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