Great Day for workshop

I had a group of students in today and as the weather was so nice we went out in the Glorious February sunshine ( yes seems odd to say that for Feb)

We spent some time in the car park at the centre( I do take them to all the glamorous places!!) and sketched the cottages and hills behind that I love so much.

We then returned to the studio and spent some time exploring some techniques whilst the stretched paper dried , including, wet on wet, water dropped into wet paint and various grades of salt.

We then looked at the sketches and decided on a suitable composition, taking things out in some cases and adding things in, in others. Then they used masking fluid to keep the paper white for the cottages so they could be a bit braver with the washes..

So check out the results. I am so pleased as its not easy to just work for a ten minute sketch, to produce a good painting and hopefully they learnt some new techniques along the way.

There was a bit of a problem with the masking fluid, I have never had it lift paper before, when it was removed, especially when I have used Bockingford paper, which is my paper of choice for students as its usually so robust, and it puts up with lots of corrections and abuse.

There may be a couple of reasons for it.

My masking fluid is very old as I don't use it very often.

We used a hair drier between stages to speed up the process, and I would normally let it dry naturally

or

I changed my supplier for the paper and although it was sold as bockinford and looks just like it I do have slight doubts about it, as it was about half the price I normally get it for. But perhaps I am just being paranoid as I have always believed if it sounds to go to be true it usually is.

Paper I am finding is my biggest problem, as I go through so much of it.

Anyway like the great people they all were, they coped with it very well and in good humour, but its did slightly ruin the smoothness of the look of the cottages as the paper was a bit damaged.