Yesterday I had the gorgeous pleasure of taking a watercolour class with an artist, Alan Louis. It was an all day class held at my daughter's kindy, which is a tranquil spot overlooking a valley of trees. Oh, bliss! The image above is my masterpiece - it's meant to be two trees reflected in water. "Technique, technique," Alan would say encouragingly, when I despaired my trees looked more like an octupus. Or maybe pink flamingoes.
He suggested I could cut out the middle and call it "Pink Flamingoes"!
The main thing I took away from this class was the idea of what Alan called values. So, when you start with a colour - say blue, and blot it straight on the page, that's a 5. You add water, to make it a 4, and so on, until you get to 1, which is a "wash". "Values, values, values," he'd say, if we moaned about how terrible our shapes were looking! He was such a generous teacher. And funny! You can see some of his incredible work here.
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