Watercolor Painting: Playing with Color with Tara Sweeney
$550 ($600 non-member) Thurs.-Sat., September 19-21, 9 a.m.-4 p.m. (3 day workshop)
Spontaneity makes for great fun for complete beginners and for experienced painters alike. Get outside your comfort zone. Try something besides photo realism. Make a bravura mark; imagine a story; find a character; follow a visual path. See what emerges when you stop forcing watercolor to do your bidding and play instead. Learn to follow watercolor’s lead with a limited palette to jump start creativity, wake up your senses and strengthen technique. Build confidence as you explore compositional possibilities, pigment characteristics, wet-into-wet mingling, transparent layering, intentional lost and found edges, and lively brushwork through daily demos, guided exercises, individualized feedback and plenty of time to paint. Tara shares her philosophy of art and process in this versatile and playful approach to watercolor’s unique possibilities. www.tarasweeneyart.com
Tara Sweeney is an award-winning artist, illustrator and author based in Saint Paul, Minnesota who creates with watercolor and ink. Her prolific body of work was recently showcased in TPT2 public television’s MN Original https://www.tpt.org/post/artist-tara-sweeney/ and includes studio painting, plein air sketching and book illustration.
Tuition includes non-refundable $50 deposit. Refunds will not be made unless your registration can be filled by someone on the waitlist and will not include the $50 deposit.
Materials List for Play with Watercolor Workshop:
-140# cold press watercolor paper and mounting board, OR watercolor BLOCK, 140# cold press. Minimum size: 9x12 inches; maximum size 12x18, quarter sheet (11x15) or similar.
-PROFESSIONAL QUALITY tube pigments. Bring what you already have but be sure to have a minimum of a warm and a cool temperature hue for each primary, plus a neutral gray. For example: quinacridone gold (warm); hansa yellow (cool); napthol red (warm); quinacridone rose (cool); ultramarine blue (warm); phthalocyanine blue green shade (cool); and paynes gray.
-tray mixing palette with several good-sized mixing areas
-synthetic round watercolor brush, #10
-Silver Black Velvet Jumbo round mop brush, small, or similar mop to deliver maximum moisture
-3 pigment pouring containers with lids (4-8 oz condiment cups work well)
-1/4 inch artist tape
-2B drawing pencil
-kneaded eraser
-small spray water bottle
-3 rinsing containers
-paper towels
-small, clean household sponge
-a terrycloth hand towel you don’t mind staining with pigment
-index weight paper for cutting stencil shapes
-scissors or exacto blade and self-healing mat
-a colorful magazine on a topic you enjoy that you won’t mind cutting up
- one water soluble material and one resist material for mixed media that you already own or would like to explore. (For example, charcoal, watercolor pencils, water-soluble graphite=water-soluble; oil pastels, wax, or crayons=resist)
