Green pears.

Last night in my watercolor class, we focused on greens. My teacher has quite an interesting perspective on green-- saying it can either be super annoying or very beautiful. She is such a hoot. Our technique was the wash. We looked to the art of Charles Rennie Mackintosh for guidance and inspiration.


After looking at Mackintosh's work and watching a brief demonstration by our teacher that had nothing to do with the actual assignment (she did a background wash only, but did not focus on the subjects on hand), we set out to work. Honestly, I was sort of grasping at straws in the beginning. Then, I decided that the only way I knew how to make this technique work was to draw out all of the variations of shade as contour-like plates on the shape of the subjects and go from there. To keep the paint from bleeding between and among plates, I waited until each plate was dry before painting its adjacent plate.


I have been alternating between hot and cold press papers on these assignments, as a challenge to myself. For the wash technique, I need A LOT more practice on the hot press. yikes. The image above is my favorite of the night. You can view it on flickr by clicking here.