Watercolors Week Two - Color Palettes

In this week's watercolor class, our instructor  Ms. McDonald gave a lesson on color palettes and the use of expressive color and shading.  She explained that she'd taken lessons from the local painter Joseph Stoddard, and used his examples to explain vivid use of color to us.  In her lecture, she quickly painted the tree above as an example, mixing several shades of greens intuitively, then showing how Stoddard would use a dark color to illustrate branches against a light background, and switch to a light branch by removing or scraping the paint when it's against a dark background. 

 

Above and below are a couple of books by Joseph Stoddard.  I took pictures so I can look them up on paperback swap or Amazon to get my own copies. 

 

 

Stoddard's paint palette is mixed from the colors above.  Below are a couple examples of his work that I loved.  The photo is above his interpretation of the Mission San Luis Obispo.  The last is Phillipe's French Dip restaurant in downtown Los Angeles. 

 

Our instructor had Prismacolor Col-Erase 20048 Black pencils at each station that she said were easy to sketch the outline of our drawing because the pencil lines could be easily erased after we were done without damaging the watercolor paints. 

We had three handouts on color combinations:

Just as last week, our instructor had a sampling of photos and clippings we could choose from as an example to paint.  The idea was to change the photo to our own color interpretation.  Above is the one that I chose, before I knew the purpose of the assignment.  I actually chose it because I liked the tones in the photo, and the idea of a yellow house.  After the lecture, we had about an hour, or a little more, to do the assignment in class.

I tried to do clouds as I'd seen the instructor demonstrate, by blotting with a paper towel or tissue paper.  My clouds retained the grid pattern from my paper towel.  I wished I'd had more time to play.  Some students continue working on the assignment at home during the week; I doubt I will make time for that during this course.  Mostly I left with a sense of creative inspiration from this class.  It will take some practice to feel like I've learned technique.

my painting