What’s on my drawing board, June 26 2020

A review of my paint-along online classes so far this year.

This weeks drawing board is filled with my demonstration paintings from my watercolour classes over the last 12 weeks. The art classes I was teaching at my local art group had to close down due to the virus, so I decided to move them online, and have been creating drawings for us to paint along with every week since the beginning of April.

Class Format

Bearing in mind most of my group are interested in watercolour techniques, and that a bit of mindful painting time was called for; I decided to hold a class where I would create a line drawing that could be downloaded and printed out on simple copy paper in preparation for our online class.

We meet up once week online, where I demonstrate how to paint each weeks subject, with my group painting along with me in real time. Our sessions usually last an hour to an hour and a half.

Top two rows drawing board

Oranges, featuring glazing techniques. Sunflower (our first class) where we concentrated on achieving bright colours and an impression of strong sunlight. Pumpkin, where colour mixing within a limited pigment range was the main challenge.
Tea Time! A classic still life paying attention to shadows, highlights and creating the illusion of three dimensional objects.
Flinders St , taking a look at one point perspective, and how it can be used to create the street scene. Domestic Interior, celebrating the compositional details to be found in the detailed depiction of one of the quiet corners in our homes.
Tonal Landscape – exploring tonal values and how they can help with creating depth and perspective in landscape painting.

Bottom row

Bath Houses – looking at the use of tonal values and a limited colour palette to create a restrained composition.
Hillside Houses – a complicated scene where glazing techniques are used to good effect in creating a balanced image.
Crooked Houses – I created a distorted cartoon style drawing for a bit of fun, creating a sense of altered reality where we could play with strong colours.