Painting Luminous Floral Watercolors on Aquabord workshop at Mendocino Art Center

 

All non-profits have been hard hit by the recession and the Mendocino Art Center is no exception.  In addition to funding problems brought on by the economy the “MAC” has also experienced a lot of turn over in staff in the past 18 months.   So I am very happy to report that the Mendocino Art Center is alive and thriving!  Thanks to a lot of hard work by volunteers from the Mendocino village and surrounding areas, workshops are happening, (4 this week), the buildings are getting refurbished, gardening is getting done, and marketing efforts are going full out.  The result is students and instructors alike are enjoying their time at the “MAC” while learning new things and making new friends.  I feel honored to have been invited to teach a workshop at this fine institution.

My workshop on painting watercolor florals on Aquabord was attended by five hardworking students, here are some photos from the workshop:

Ann with her paintings, the one on the left was painted from live flowers, the one on the right from a photo. 

I was pleased that by the end of the week all of the students were painting from live flowers instead of just depending on photographs as their source.

Hetti with her favorite of the paintings she did, not finished yet but look at the value contrasts she is getting!

Lynn just started putting in a fun purple  background when I took this photo.  Her sunflower has beautiful glowing color, no muddy color here!

And here is Marie with her sunflower, complete with a bee in the center.   She also did a lovely painting of a complicated live bouquet of tropical flowers but since it was not finished we are posting the sunflower painting.

 

Wendy’s tropical painting was created from a live bouquet and her sunflower from a photo, both are stunning.

Aquabord is a very different surface than watercolor paper, and all the ladies worked very hard to unlearn some techniques that work well on paper while learning what works on the Aquabord instead. 

Thanks to the Mendocino Art Center for hosting this workshop and to my students for being so much fun and so receptive to new ideas and new techniques.