Art of the Carolinas-Watercolor Class

I admit that I thought long and hard about whether or not to fork out the cash for a day-long class at Art of the Carolinas.  It is the month before Christmas...and I could buy a lot of books, DVD's, and art supplies for the price of the class...

It was so worth it!  I loved it!  I cannot recommend a class with Karlyn Holman highly enough!

She is fun, encouraging, and brought oodles of paintings to show us. 

 We began the class with two strikes against us.  First of all, the supplies which Karlyn had shipped had not arrived.  So, no kits with photos to work from, no line drawings, and no step-by-step instructions.  No Arches paper.  No watercolor pencil kits.  She got up at 5:00 AM and prepared a line drawing for each of us in time for the 9:00 AM class, and got the paper from Jerry's.

And-OOPS!  The workshop supply list was not included on the website.  We were supposed to bring palettes, paint, brushes...most people did not bring anything.  So, most of us used Karlyn's paint and brushes.  Others came more prepared and shared their supplies.  A very nice group.  I brought a few items just in case, but had to borrow a palette, a brush, some paint colors, and  a hair dryer.

Anyway, it was amazing what was accomplished despite the obstacles!  Most of us painted the hollyhocks, since that was the subject she demonstrated.

We painted luscious backgrounds and added collaged Japanese papers and stenciling.  Here is mine.

After lunch we started negative painting the dark areas. The biggest challenge was learning how to "lose the edges" of paint. 

Then we added some dark foliage shapes.

Finally, it was on to the "positive shapes,"  or the drawn design elements of leaves, stems, and flowers.  She showed us how to paint "cast shadows" on the flowers (the violet areas.)

We learned how to paint the leaves, remembering to leave white space for the veins.  Karlyn mixes all her own greens.

Gradually we filled in stems and petals.

This was a rather complicated painting with lots of detail.  Most of us did not finish.  But we had a critique at the end, with each student work displayed in a white mat.  Amazing what we all learned during the class! Here are a few of the unfinished student paintings.

And here is mine.  I have a lot of work left to do.  I am going to wait until my kit arrives, and I have the paint colors I need.  But I am so happy with my painting so far!