Art Along Seagulls Part 1

Here are the details for my online class this Thursday evening, 6 August.

This week we are going down to the beach (virtually of course!), and painting some seagulls, and their reflections in the water at low tide.

Download your line drawing for this weeks session below, I recommend using the portrait printing option, and scaling your image to fit the page.

Seagulls Line Drawing © Karen Smith, August 2020, you may download this line drawing for personal use only, this image may not be reproduced or copied in any form.

Take a good look at my reference photo, the key elements are the water, how flat and calm it is, giving us good reflections, the rocks in the foreground, the weeds being revealed by the low tide, and strong contrast the brightness of the seagulls plumage provides.

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The main colours you will need for this painting are cool and warm blues and cool and warm browns.
Ultramarine Blue, Phthalo Blue, Burnt Sienna & Burnt Umber.

We will start our session by setting up our colour palette for the picture, and selecting our brushes.

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I recommend taping your paper down to a surface with masking tape. I tape my copier paper down to thin foam card, plywood or even some stiff card will do just as well. This will help to keep the paper flatter, you may also want to have a hairdryer to hand to dry the layers of paint as we go along.

For our session you will need:

• Your seagull line drawing printout, ordinary copy paper is fine for this exercise.
  Make the print image fill your A4 Portrait sheet of paper, so it can be as big as possible.
• Your sketchbook or a spare piece of paper to try out your paint mixes on before applying colour to your painting, you could even print off a second copy of the line drawing for this.
• Watercolour paints: blues and browns.
• Size 8-12 round brush a smaller 6-8 round brush, plus a 1/2″ wide flat brush.
• A palette for mixing your paints – a white ceramic plate works well
• 2 pots of clean water
• Rag or kitchen roll (for wiping your brushes on)
• Hairdryer

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Watercolour paint names and where in the painting you will use them.

Ultramarine Blue – (C33 swivel paints) water
Phthalo Blue / Cobalt Blue (29 swivel paints) water
Burnt Sienna (this is a warm brown) – (mix C17 & C33 swivel paints) for the weeds and rocks
Paynes Grey – (mix C43 & C37 swivel paints) for the gulls
Burnt Umber (this is a cooler brown) (C42 swivel paints) for the rocks
Cadmium Red ( C11)for the gulls beaks and legs
Sap Green ( C25 is perfect!) for the weeds