Instructor: Jim Prothero bio
Ages: Advanced Beginners to Intermediate
Dates: Wednesdays 1:30pm-4:30pm
June 12 through July 10 (five weeks)
5 Classes: $250
Email: jimprotherowatercolor@gmail.com
Class Description
Watercolor Breakthrough
Taught by
Jim Prothero
Wednesdays, 3 hours, June 12 through July 10. Five weeks
$250.00
Advanced beginners to intermediate
Syllabus:
This is a class for those who have been painting in watercolor for a short while and know the basics, but are not happy with their work. People are nice and encouraging about your paintings but no one wants one, or wants to hang one, unless they’re very fond of you personally, and are family. You struggle to make the paintings do what you envision, and they always fail you. Perhaps you have little or no art education, and you just don’t know why your paintings aren’t working.
I am Jim Prothero, and I will be teaching a class on how to break through in your watercolor painting. I will cover the following concepts and more:
– planning your painting for an attainable success–stop trying to “map” a photograph
– avoiding over-painting
– using value, composition and shrewd color-mixing to make things work for you
– discovering that everything you see is really a shadow
– how to lead the viewer’s eye
– discovering the colors you’ve been taught not to see
– using watercolor tricks with masque, salt, blooms, solid-shape teeth, repeating of a color, and happy accidents
– learning water control in your brushes and strategizing drying time for maximum effect
– I will share books and other affordable resources that made a huge difference in my work and can in yours
Each session will begin with:
- 20 minutes to a half an hour examining images of paintings and discussing why they do or do not work.
- A skill-building assignment on watercolor paper
- The remaining time will be student painting to work on the watercolor(s) they wish to complete during the class
The student will be expected to keep a notebook and take notes throughout the class
Week 1:
Avoiding over-painting
Moving away from mapping a photo
Leading the viewer’s eye
Skill-building assignment: experimenting with drying time and hard and soft edges
Week 2:
Water control
Value, composition, and shrewd color-mixing
Unseen colors, a million greens out there
Skill-Building assignment: how to find secondary colors in you paints and avoid muddy color
Week 3:
Hard edges and perspective
Everything is a shadow; the vital planning of values with composition
The human face and all the pitfalls solid-shape teeth
Skill-Building assignment: pair off to create quick portraits of a partner
Week 4:
Watercolor tricks with masque, pull-outs, and spatter
Also light speckles on lake surfaces, , and happy accidents
Light to dark, saving the whites . . . but not too much
Skill-Building assignment: paint a landscape with a lake surface and varied greens in the brush around the edges
Week 5:
Using salt, blooms
Repeating of a color and other composition-tightening tricks
Summary of skills learned
Skill-Building assignment: Share with class a finished painting and explain what techniques we learned you were able to apply to the execution of this particular painting.