Art in the Forest #4 & #5

This is no good – I’m only averaging one blog a month this year, so here's an extra long one!  The last two Art in the Forest workshops have been about exploring colour – firstly with pastels and then with paint (gouache and acrylic). The preceding sessions have been about shape, line and pattern in various mediums but generally monochromatic, and mostly black & white. So these later sessions produced a riot of colour as we dabbled with messy pastels and the mysteries of the colour wheel. Many in the group hadn’t used pastel before, so we experimented with different types (hard and soft, bargain and professional) as well as different types of paper.

Another get to know one another with some speedy portraits was a great way to give everyone a chance to try out everything.

We then moved on to some serious sheep drawing and some fabulous results.

Janys loved her new medium so much, she went home, drew a lovely portrait of some horses and sold it on the spot!

But not everyone liked the mess and was definitely not converted to pastels.

The following week we entered more comfortable territory for some, water soluble paint. But we challenged ourselves to think about how we see and select pigment by using a colour wheel. 

 

Firstly painting with only the 3 primary colours, then 6 colours (primary and secondary) and then all 12 colours of the wheel (primary, secondary and tertiary). 

A riot of fabulous colour (out of shot - 7 tired students and a lot of washing up)