I love taking classes. It almost doesn’t matter what the class is. I just love learning all kinds of things and I love improving my skills.
I decide to take one of Tracy Weinzapfel’s Fresh Start in Art 5 Day Challenges. I also purchased the bonus bookmark making class just for fun.
I’m 4 days into the class and I’m loving it.
On day 1, we just created watercolor backgrounds. I have been doing this for years, but it is always great to get new tips and ideas from a new expert.
I always find painting with any medium to be very relaxing. I especially love when I can do something like this with no expectation of right or wrong for the finished piece.
She had us split some pages into two pieces. We did larger backgrounds as well. She went through all the techniques: wet on wet, wet on dry, dry on wet and so forth. It was actually fun just to quickly follow her instructions and not think about it too much.
Day 2 was saved for sketching flowers. She showed us three different flowers and I liked that she almost did things too fast. In order to keep up with her, I had to sketch without overthinking and I liked that. The other thing she had us do was to go over every petal and leaf and outline it a second time. What a great way to embrace imperfections from the original sketch.
She also had us tape off each individual section of the page and draw borders around the tape edges when we were done. I love the look of this and I love how it helps define the project and make it look finished. It dressed up the practice pieces and made them feel like artwork.
This was a fun activity. One of the things she did that I liked, was to have us cut the page into 3 separate pieces. It’s always hard to fill an entire page in an art book so I thought this was genius. I can tackle a smaller space while I’m practicing and get extra “pages” in my notebook to practice on.
On day 3, we sketched a larger flower background and added lots of sketchy details.
I thought that adding the details really stepped the sketches up a notch as did adding the border.
I did the day 4 lesson today. We sketched flowers, painted them with watercolors, then added the sketch details and the border.
I really liked doing this. No part of the process has required perfection or even raw talent. Tracy has perfected embracing the imperfections and the method that she uses it to create quickly and then sketch over it and add some quick flick details that really seem to camouflage your imperfections and give the entire piece a whimsical feel.
Tomorrow is the last class for this challenge and we will be covering an entire page with flowers and painting them.
I can’t wait!!
I’m going to take one of her acrylic painting classes next.
Have a great day friend!
