Lesson 55 Furry Animals

How does one paint fur? In this lesson we experimented with different ways of dragging and stamping to create fur texture, working wet in wet to make a blurry, fuzzy edge and creating a jagged edge to a shape to read as fur. Next we worked on a portrait of a furry animal using these various approaches.

Barbara used dry brush stokes to create a fur texture and negative painted an irregular edge on the right, sunlit side of the dog to say 'fur'.

Dan began working very wet letting the paint form blurry edges. Later he sharpened up the left edge and added line work on the right in the tail.

Nancy worked with flat patches of color letting the jagged edges say 'fur'.

Rochelle used the red to paint a sharp furry edge around her cat and used gray to create some jagged edges in the neck fur.

Lesson 54 Color and Value

For this lesson we were using watercolor paints full strength from the tubes - applying them much as an oil painter would. We wanted to determine the value of the various undiluted pigments. We began with a value scale marked off in white plus 10 increments of greys ending in black. Next we assigned tube colors a value by comparing a color swatch with our scale. Finally we took a black and white photo, imagined in as a 'paint by number' arrangement of value shapes and painted each shape in with the color that best approximated its value.

Here is Liz's color chart and a small landscape.

Norma's mountains and yellow sky worked particularly well.

Elaine also ended up with a yellow sky and various greens and oranges in her landscape.

Carrie was able to make sense out of a complicated beach scene .

Lesson 53 Pressed Textures

One way to create interesting textures in watercolor is to press objects into a wet wash, let it dry, and remove the objects. The pigments will collect at the edges or under folds and form shapes. Crumpled plastic wrap is an old standby. Shapes cut out of mylar, bubble wrap, corrugated cardboard, stretched out gauze are all fun to play with. For this exercise we laid a wet wash of two colors in a horizontal band across the paper and set in a variety of stuff. Once this dried and the objects removed we added smooth washes to the top and bottom portions of the design. The textures now suggest rocks or hills which we refined.

Wendy turned her textured band into coastal rocks.


Mary Ann saw mountains and trees.


Leslie found bold stylized hill forms.


Bev is beginning to paint in portions of the texture shapes which may become rocks.

Lesson 52 Fall Leaves

Each session I incorporate one lesson were we look at a subject closely and strive for photo realism. For this lesson we studied fall leaves. We were lucky to find richly colored leaves to work with and ones with interesting twists and folds. We set the leaves on white paper and incorporated shadows to give additional dimension to the work.

Emily had to work around the light veins in this leaf plus depict the dark mottled pattern.

Carla worked on an arrangement of three differently colored leaves.

Susan found wonderful variation on dark browns in what at first glance looked like a rather drab leaf.

Elaine also worked with dried brown leaves, but in her case she focused on giving the leaves form and making them look three dimensional.

Cannon Beach, Oregon

I got a bit behind in class blog postings because I took a trip up to visit my paintings in Northwest by Northwest Gallery in Cannon Beach, Oregon. Dave and I had a wonderful time exploring the coast and I feel inspired to paint some rocks and waves!

Lesson 51 Creating Mood Using Color and Line

For this exercise we played with creating different moods by varying color schemes and by emphasizing different types of lines.
Here Linda has created a bright, cheery study -

And here she has created a more somber mood -


In Lois's first study she used angular lines and brighter colors-

And in her second piece she emphasized curvy shapes and used a monochromatic palette.