Watercolor potpourri

I did a quickie demo on painting trees for a makeup class this afternoon. The main idea was to get the shapes and values quickly without a lot of fussing and sponge-dabbing. I've been getting after them about being "itchy" with picky details that don't contribute to the colors, shapes and values that make a picture strong. We'll see how it takes as time goes by. But the most fun was watching the students browse five books I took for them to look through, representing artists from the Romantic period through modern art. Artists included J.M.W. Turner, the Fauves, Edward Hopper, Andrew Wyeth and Lawrence Goldsmith. It was a lot to take in and I could see that some were beginning to recognize personal style, cultural influences, and the directness of artistic expression in all of these artists. This session of classes is the first time I've offered so much art history and they're loving it. Awhile back I prepared an eight-page summary of major art movements from prehistoric to modern art and they use this to place artists in the context of their time.