Watercolour Weekends in the Peak District National Park
Content of a Watercolour Course for a 1day, weekend or week duration
The longer the course more detail and de
pth is achieved
An aim of a course is for each student to produce paintings worth
framing. The tutor will offer advice by showing as well as telling so that progress
is made in understanding the medium. The focus of a course is to learn from
success in order to deal with difficulties with less emphasis on learning from
failure.
There is opportunity to ask questions throughout the day and receive personal
tuition. Below is a long list of tasks that cannot be fully completed on a one
day course. A programme will be developed on the day to suit the needs of all
students.
The courses are normally referred to as workshops so there is lots of supervised
practice that links the tuition. I am often asked if I come on another course
will the programme be different. Yes the content of the course follows the list
of tasks below but the programme will be different.
The courses are designed to be fun so that students are learning in a relaxed
atmosphere. Much emphasis on "learning by doing".
 | Review existing experience of watercolour painting through initial practice |
| Discuss appropriate materials for watercolour painting |
| Selecting simple studies and then progress to more difficult ones |
| Selecting the most effective composition for a given subject |
| Compare painting style-tight versus loose (illustration vs impressionism) |
| Simplifying photographic images for water colour painting |
| Simplifying our vision of landscape on location |
| Viewpoint |
| Landscape practicing sky and landscape objects, part and whole learning |
| Still life |
| Understanding through practice the use of soluble and insoluble pigments |
| Selecting only a few colours and mixing others |
| The concept and context of wet in wet, wet on dry, dry on wet and dry on dry |
| Mixing colours in the palette and on the paper |
| Understanding key colours, complementary colours, warm and cool colours |
| Transparent and opaque colours and lifting colours from the painting |
| Positive and negative shapes and tone values |
| Shadow colour in different colours of light |
| Ariel or colour perspective |
| Reflections from land objects and in water |
| Using 5, 10 and 30 minute studies to avoid overworking a subject |
| Painting from pencil studies; from our imagination and memory Please do not be overawed by the list above we are likely to learn more from practice and then reviewing to improve next time |