Plower Fower Flower Power

I feel blessed to have come across a wonderful group this summer session at the West End Community Centre. I’m not crazy about the room I landed but for the first time I brought my students on the balcony. It’s decrepit and the tiles make a squishy noise when you walk on them but it’s so worth it and I’m sure very few have made use of it through the years. There’s just enough daylight left when we finish at 8:30. Because my trip to Montreal is coming up, there will only be 4 classes this session.

Curious, dedicated and unafraid are some of the qualities these people bring to the table to make this such an exceptional experience so far. One of them is a delightful individual returning to me from a drawing class I teach elsewhere. I am always very honoured when that happens.

I am quite pleased because in an effort to remedy some of the flaws from last session, I obtained a special budget for some student quality sets for the students to try on the first class. In the future, I want to present art as affordable because for some, finances are a real concern wile for others, lets face it, the paints and brushes will sit in a box for years after the class. Yarka makes one of the best bargains out there and they will be welcome to use them at any time. By mixing these affordable colors together, you can obtain a variety of hues that are more than sufficient for a beginner.

The theme for this term is letting the white of the paper sing. It has already proven helpful to keep our work light and airy. It is common for watercolours to want to dance with the immaculate paper and after all, it is summer. We should be basking in the light right now.

For the first class we drew a golf ball which I had found at the park earlier that day. A drawing from observation of a spherical shape is always a great introduction to drawing. It’s something the mind can wrap itself around and it’s extremely useful to gage the talent in the room. Knowing my students, their skills and aspirations always helps in tailoring my feedback to help them improve. Sometimes they would rather express themselves than improve so I also have to be sensitive to that.

There was a time to make some technical studies of colour, gradients etc.

Later that day, we went to the library to draw people on the fly. With a fine liner, they were to capture library-goers without lifting the pen off the paper. No one complained about being drawn.

At the end, we headed back upstairs to play freely with the watercolours on those sketches from the library. It was an art moment with no mistakes, just experimentation!

The second class was last Tuesday. I asked everyone to bring flower references and to my surprise some brought real flowers.

For the first assignment, we wet areas of the paper and began splattering the paints with red, blue and yellow, our primaries. The drops falling on the wet would disperse and the ones falling on the dry retained their circular shape. Some chose other colours which I think is really cute.

Hands are literally my left hand man when it comes to teaching people to observe negative shape. I have them hold a pose with their non-dominant hand with a few fingers bent and coming towards them. I demonstrate for them. When students realize the silhouette comes first and the foreshortened, overlapping fingers second, something tends to click. That drawing took longer than expected. I couldn’t stop them, they were learning so much.

After this there were 2 five minute gestures of the flowers we were about to draw on the watercolour paper. The intention was for them to bring the speedy energy of those gestures in the sketch under their final painting. That energy makes the composition less stilted and the rehearsal fosters innovation in areas like cropping for example.

Painting the flowers was relaxing, I could see individual styles shining as colours were bringing the pictures to life. I suggested drawing flowers on the splatter painting from earlier for those who finished quickly. This optional exercise was about finding shapes in the accidental abstraction.

We had less than an hour to paint the flowers and it went by in a flash. Everyone was literally shocked when I said the class was over. It’s to be expected with such an abundance of content.

I love where Kelsea is going with this, I really want to see more from her.

I had a sense that this first summer edition of Painting and Drawing would be special. More light puts people in a better mood as better weather makes us more mobile, especially for a bike commuter like myself. Still this group dynamic exceeds my expectations and I am looking forward to two more classes with these lovely people.

Next week we will be meeting at the laughing men statues next to English bay. Stay tuned!

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