Demonstrations from Last Class at The Art League

These are the last 3 demonstrations from my classes at the Art League in Alexandria, sadly it will be my last in this series, since I opted to quit teaching there after 20 wonderful years.  I will be teaching watercolor painting but in a less structured environment with a more flexible schedule.  I plan to post watercolors from the studio, both opaque and transparent in the future.  These 3 paintings were all focused on getting the values right and really understanding how to get the lights light and the darks dark.  This sounds pretty simple but to a lot of painters they struggle with using the white of the paper as part of their color and value and conversely they struggle with taking away enough water from their mixtures to reduce the effect of the white paper, making it impossible to really get the darks they need for their composition.  It really comes down to less water more pigment and less rubbing of the paper with the brush if you want to achieve a nice rich colorful dark value.  I wanted the land mass at the left to recede so I really pushed the blue violet into the green of the trees and kept the details to a minimum.  I also made sure to reflect the approximate colors and values in the water for the trees.In this demonstration, I designed it to have a lot of things to look at but with the surf and the water as the true centers of interest.  I downplayed the light house and trees,  and was really careful to create I nice sheen of light out on the distant horizon.  I kept the surf interesting but not fussy, just enough to say movement and texture to say power and white surf.  The upward thrust of the waves move you eye up the cliffs to the light house, and the clouds drop you back down to the light on the horizon.This is a watercolor version of the following oil painting, I like the subject and thought it would work well as a demonstration about controlling the values in a watercolor.Oil Painting “Afternoon Light Tupelo”