March Watercolor Painting Class

At Yvonne Joyner's March 11th Watercolor class at AZ Art Supply, we were concentrating on shadows. I'd gotten some wonderful photos from one of our MINI Cooper peeps who takes tons of photos and does a great job of it. But after Yvonne's demo, we all decided to use the same photo, the one she was using for her demo. She'd made enough tiny copies of it for each of us to have one. It was really interesting to see what everyone did with the same view of the same subject.

First, we played with some mixes of complementary colors that we would use to paint the shadows when we got to that point. Then we did value sketches in our sketch books. Next, we made light line sketches of our subject on our watercolor paper. Finally, we started to paint.

I wish I'd taken photos as I went along, because I liked my painting better before I "finished" it aka ruined it! Why can't I remember to Keep It Simple?!?

Here's a view of the classroom with everyone's paintings hanging on the wall.

So here's my painting.

Starting at the top, we like it. I added more flowers because the flower mass seemed too small once I started painting. Then the background. I like the background. I wish I'd left more blank white in between the flowers to make it sparkle. I also wish I'd stopped painting sooner. The flagstones are too light, so I started putting in details instead of just making them darker.

Big mistake!

The two biggest mistakes are the way-too-detailed areas on each side of the painting that represent the areas between the flagstones that were filled with mulch. :( Just a nice, light wash would have been better. 

Next time.