Betsey MacDonald: Water, Water, Everywhere! - 4 Week Watercolor class (Intermediate-Advanced)

Class Description: As Rhode Islanders, we live in the ocean state which also has hundreds of fresh water ponds and lakes. So, water abounds! In fact, the Rhode Island Watercolor Society is on the beautiful Slater Pond! We see the sky and clouds reflected in the water every day. We see boats, buildings, trees, people and animals with either squiggly watery or perfect mirror images beneath them all the time. I’ve been studying reflections for a few years now and in an attempt to better understand what happens in the water, this is what I’ve chosen to paint and I love it! It’s as if the water allows for a realistic image above and an abstraction below. In this class, we’ll learn about how these reflections are created, what conditions affect their appearance and how we can better paint them. A mood and sense of the environment is created by water and we’ll strive for depicting that mood in our paintings. In the process of painting water and subjects in water, we’ll also learn about choosing paints and papers, color mixing, using washes, layering and other watercolor techniques

Course Objectives

• Learn to really see and paint water
• Acquire skills with a variety of watercolor painting techniques
• Learn about clean color mixing and layering
• Become comfortable with watercolor experimentation
• Develop an appreciation of watercolor accidents and how they can be useful
• Creatively paint from our own photos
• Observe, critique and discuss student work and master watercolors
• Transfer photos to paper in several ways
• Determine which photos may be a useful reference

Materials student will need to provide: Watercolor set(an inexpensive tray is fine but a set of tubes with palette is great, too), variety of brushes, masking fluid, watercolor block or pad(at least 140 lb, 8x 10, 12 x 16, 16 x 20 or a few sheets with a gator foam board for stapling or some other support or 300 lb paper which doesn’t need mounting , hot or cold press or even rough can work, jar or two for water, spray bottle, sponge or two, #2 pencil or mechanical pencil, paper towel. If possible, several printed 8 x 10 photos taken by the student of water, ocean, river, pond, objects reflected in the water, waves, waterfall but I’ll have some as well

Materials provided by instructor: I will bring my own supplies to share for experimenting and some photos as well

Betsey MacDonald Bio