Lesson 30 - Winslow Homer style value study

Winslow Homer was not afraid to use white paint for accents in his paintings. He also experimented with value studies on toned paper. For this lesson's challenge we coated a sheet of watercolor paper with a mid value wash and worked out a composition of dark shapes on top. Finally we decided which area needed more emphasis and added accents with opaque white watercolor.

Jim covered his paper with a light purple wash and used the white paper to highlight the sun and edges of the boat.


Georgine used a gray wash and chose to highlight the distant small boat.


Emily began with a reddish brown wash and highlighted the foreground boat edges.

Sheauli began with ocher tones and used the white accent in the background to create interest in the left side of the painting.

Lesson 29 Designing with Chair Shapes

In this lesson we began with photographs of chairs and experimented cropping them to make the most pleasing arrangement of shapes within a rectangle window.


Emily focused in on a row of chairs and chose a long narrow format.

Alice used only one chair and repeated the vertical lines in the chair in the background trees.


This painting is not finished but I like the way Barbara treated the chair, table and vase as one dark blue shape.


Herching cropped into sections of two chairs to create an interesting design of brown and yellow shapes.

Lesson 28 - Winter Trees

Depicting leafless trees can be a challenge, particularly when dealing with fine branches. In this lesson we experimented with stamping with sponges, crumpled plastic wrap, and cardboard and drawing fine lines with brushes, knifes and twigs. Next we created a sky by wetting the paper, dropping in paint and blotting out clouds with paper towels. Finally, when this was dry, we added a bare tree.

Elaine used sponges and plastic wrap to stamp a texture pattern that suggests bare twigs.

Celine drew fine lines in many colors using a brush.

Barbara created her twigs with light sponge stamping.

Sabra used a combination of fine lines and sparse stamping on her tree.

Lesson 27 - Color Preferences

Do you prefer warm colors? Cool colors? Bright or greyed colors? This lesson is designed to help you understand your color preferences. We began by dividing a 3" square into 5 unequal sections and filling it in with pleasing color combinations. Next we expanded on this idea by dividing a sheet of watercolor paper into quarters, drawing in simple produce shapes and making color choices as we filled in the shapes.

Joanne used bright colors and played with patterns.

Christine used variations of a secondary triad, orange, violet and green.

Carol used softer, greyed colors.


Alice worked with warm, analogous colors with blue accents.