Watercolor Basics

This transparent water-based painting medium has been enjoyed and used for centuries. Regardless of your experience level, you will learn how to use materials and all the techniques associated with watercolor. You will see demonstrations, and we will discuss composition, design, subject matter, and textures that lend themselves to this medium.

You will leave this course with a full knowledge of how to use materials such as brushes, papers, and paint-to-water ratio. Focus will be given to inventing the medium for yourself by learning to gain the right amount of control for your style. 
In doing this, we will explore different washes: wet on wet, wet on dry, dry on dry painting, in order to help you understand how to make different textures while learning to control the uncontrollable: water! 

Important Things to Note:

• We will go over color theory and mix colors from the primaries while learning to address highlights and shadows by working without white paint. 
• Projects within the course will focus on painting from observation. 
• It is beneficial to build a strong foundation in an observational practice in order to understand composition and design, negative space, color changes from cool to warm, and using contrast and layers to build a believable 3-dimensional space on the paper. 
• You will leave with a broad experience in the medium that will allow you to branch into any direction of your choosing, not simply the direction the water tells you to go!

Students will need to bring the following materials: 

• 1 Pad of Paper: (Cold press, 140 lb (300 gsm), 11 x14, 12 sheets.) Great cheap papers: Canson Montval, or Strathmore Series 300 or 400. Other great papers: Arches,  Fabriano, Saunders. 
  * Avoid "Borden & Riley Vellum" and "Canson XL"
• Hard Pencil (HB or 2H)
• Kneaded EraserTray/Pallet: A metal travel palette with a lid and at least 12 wells for different colors.
• Range of Watercolor Brush Sizes varying from round and flat For example: 0 round, 4 or 6 flat, 10 round, 20 flat (you will know them from oil brushes because the bristles on water-based brushes are very soft to the touch.) 
• 1 Water Container, a plastic cup or coffee tin (anything out of the recycle bin will do.)
• Watercolor Paint Tubes: I would recommend buying a box of 8-15 small tubes of all the basic colors (Cotman, Blick, or Koi are good starter brands). 
  *** At the very minimum you must have a primary colors: Cadmium Red Deep, Cadmium Yellow, Ultramarine Blue, Lamp Black, and Burnt Umber. (No White, Naples Yellow, or “Flesh Tint”) I recommend opening the tubes of paint in the store to make sure the colors look "primary" aka, that the red is really RED and not an orangey red, etc. Also please avoid Reeves Paints, very low quality and hard to work with.
• Kitchen Paper towels
• 1 Natural sea sponge 
• 1 Pen-like Xacto Knife