Beginners courses

These lovely ladies are on one of my new beginners courses.  The course runs for 6 weeks and takes up  3 hours in the afternoons.  In that time we cover Line, Tone and Colour. Nothing is in any detail but hopefully it gives a good basis from which they can build on.  I thought it would be interesting to show you some of what we do.  

NB. The work shown is not necessarily from the ladies in the photo.

We do a few silly mark making exercises and draw some basic line drawings from photos. Then we start adding tone. These are simple shapes and that have high contrast so they can start to pick out the tone easily.

They then go on to use charcoal and chalk when they start drawing from real items, in this instance their mug ( everyone always has a cup of tea in front of them) 

Working in charcoal speeds them up so they can capture the light before it changes to much ( and before their tea goes cold)

They then bring in their own items to draw and can use pencil or charcoal depending on what they find easiest

They learn about breaking up items into shapes and start drawing complex items like their own hands.

 We look at basic colour theory and they do a tonal drawing in watercolours watering one colour paint down into 3 tones and using the white paper as their lightest tone. They revisit painting their mug as the technique for doing it is the same.   This always seems to be the hardest part for the students.

it throws them, even though it is basically the same technique as drawing , just using a brush and paint instead.

They are given a basic colour wheel and we talk about how to make their own mixing guides .
They do basic colour washes and then move into painting from a photograph.

These are a couple of examples of previous students first paintings. Most students who come to me,  haven't painting since school but some have dabbled a bit .  One of theses students had painted a bit before ,  the other hadn't.

Of course throughout the whole 6 weeks they are shown a variety of techniques.  We use watercolours to start off with but for the final painting some use pastels

and some use acrylics.

I hope that its been interesting to see how I progress my students.  This is the basis for my course but as each group is different and works at different speeds. I may vary what we do.

Some of these students then move onto my regular groups, which are not so structured.  They get to choose what they want to do and and in what mediums.  I help them through and show them the techniques they need to achieve the results they want.

If you want to see more of my students work,  you can see their Gallery on my website.  This is updated  regularly  http://www.wellydog.co.uk/student-gallery.html


Janice x