Watercolour class with Gisèle Lapalme

This fall I am taking a watercolour class locally with Gisèle Lapalme, a member of the Hudson Artists. Gisèle works in acrylic, oil and pastel, as well as watercolour. Gisèle is a great teacher. She begins each class with a little demo, and makes it all seem so effortless. She encourages our efforts and gives good advice.

For the first class, Gisèle had us concentrate on skies, using complementary colours. Gisèle always has lots of photos on hand to inspire our compositions.











The following week, the focus was on foliage. I was too tentative here with my positioning of the trees, so you can see the background showing through the tree trunks.








I was away for Class #3, when the topic was night scenes and split complementary colour schemes. Gisèle introduced texture in the fourth class. Here I tried using paraffin as a resist on the sides of the house. I applied paint through a screen to give the roof texture and dabbed on paint with a sea sponge to detail the foliage.

Week #5 was the human figure. I had a big problem with this because I worked from a photo that featured figures in an interesting dynamic, but they were wearing black clothes, so it was difficult for me to use light and shadow to give the subjects form. The girl on the left had her head cocked at an unusual angle too. I gave up on this piece.











Here is the result of class #6, Still Life.










Upcoming subjects are animals (cringe) and portraits (yikes!).

I'm having lots of fun with this, and learning from the other students too. I think exploring another medium is a good way to expand my understanding of art fundamentals.