Monday, August 11, 2008

Carol Carter Workshop - Day Three Info

Well, I have sorted my photos and realized I didn't take a photo of the last part of the painting Carol did :( I have to say I had an excuse - I was going on 4 hours of sleep and by later in the day my brain was really not working right. I even left my painting behind when I packed up and left and had to go back and get it.

So after a good night's sleep last night and catching up on things here at home today, I'm ready to share the last day with Carol (hopefully not my last and I am definitely going to see her again somewhere sometime in the future!).

So the Day Three Demo was a water lily with pads in lovely water - Carol's wet-in-wet and juicy colors work well with water so you can see why she does so many water themes (plus they have such personal meaning to her).

Working with a warm and a cool (Carol says, "A warm and a cool will do your work for you."), she started with the pads, not the water. If this was our painting she would have told us to start with the water (remember, work from the farthest background to the foreground) but she can break that rule - she's the teacher!


She prewet the pads, put a body color of Prussian Blue in and then dropped in yellow (don't ask me what this was since I don't remember but it was by Old Holland) while it was still very very wet.





After she had the color the way she wanted, she went back in around the edges with a darker mix of the Prussian Blue to strengthen the edges. She did this with a smaller brush than she used to paint the pads - she is a stickler with making your tools work for you and don't use a big brush when you just want to add a bit of color and a small brush will do.

Pads were done and the water was next. Surprise! She prewet the areas she wanted to work in and put in Burnt Sienna :) and then greyed that down (pushed it back) with Cobalt Turquoise on top - it made a greyed area that doesn't fight with the warmer, brighter lily pads. Careful because Cobalt Turquoise can be a very aggressive pigment!


Again, it's all about pure color. Working while the area is wet wet wet so you don't get much and working with a limited palette, whatever colors you choose.





She started working on the flowers rising up from the water, using the same colors and working the same way to get brighter color or more muted color, working her warms and cools.

In the studio, Carol would have waited for each wash to dry before going back to the painting and doing more. Why? In order to check the values as they are drying to make sure they don't need to be darker or lighter before the paper is dry and it's too late. In the workshop, with limited time, she used a hairdryer.

When I say she works wet-into-wet, I am talking WET! Can you see the water on this painting? Juicy!




















Like I said, I didn't get a photo of the finished piece - maybe by this time I was working on my own painting - but I bet Carol or Sandy will share it on their blogs.

Tomorrow I will share some of the exercises and work I did in the workshop and some quotes from Carol that I love.

Again, if you can get your watercolor society or painting group or teacher to bring Carol for a 3-day workshop, you will be very pleased!

Before I met her and saw her work, I was just a wannabe Carolette but it's official now: I'm a Carolette for Life :)

4 comments:

Nava said...

That looks delicious - waiting to see your own work as a Carolette :-)

Vicki Greene said...

I wish I could have been there. Thanks for sharing all of the pictures and info.

RH Carpenter said...

Glad you are enjoying the paintings adn the workshop info, Nava and Vicki. I'm hoping I can incorporate some things into my work so you should see a change in the next few paintings :)

Deb Léger said...

Wow, love the waterlilies! I'd love to see it finished. Thanks for the recap Rhonda. It looks like it was a fascinating workshop. It's clear to see how much you loved it!