I have just returned from running a three day watercolor painting workshop for the Wallabadah Art Group.
Wallabadah is a small New South Wales country town, set amongst beautiful scenery, with an eager and active art community that organise regular workshops in all mediums.
My host was Tania Hartigan whose family owns a 600 acre farm on which I was billeted. She has a number of on site cottages that artists can rent while staying in the town. Artists are encouraged to paint scenes on property while staying there. Next year the workshop will be run on the same property which is very exciting as it comes with many wonderful landscape subjects such as sheep, cattle, farmhouse, shearing shed, old farm equipment, creek, early morning light and beautiful sunsets – it will be a lot of fun!
This year we completed three watercolor paintings an old shearing shed, the West MacDonnell Ranges in the Northern Territory, and a bright Autumn Scene set at Mt Wilson in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney. My workshops are a mixture of step by step demonstration and class style watercolor lessons and advice which my students seem to appreciate.
Below you will find some images of the of the paintings which were completed.
Wallabadah watercolor workshop paintings Aug 2012
A watercolor workshop environment can be quite difficult and should be tackled with the right attitude. The important thing is to walk away from the workshop having learnt a great deal and know that you will be able to apply parts of it to your own work after it is finished. The aim should not be to totally mimic your tutor’s style but to extract those bits that fit in and enhance the way you like to paint. Many years ago I attended a week long watercolor workshop at which I had a wonderful time and produced some reasonable work. After the workshop, however, I found that for the next three months my work seemed to go down hill. It was only after I realised I has trying too hard to paint like someone else that things turned around. I went back to my own style (the way I like to paint) and added just those bits of the tutor’s style that fitted with my own. My work promptly bounced back and bounded forward.
Some of the students at watercolor workshop
My workshop set up including video camera and projector
This was my third visit to this fun art group and I hope there will be many more.
