Beginner's Botanical Watercolour Workshops...
This is a little introduction to my 'Beginner's Botanical Watercolour Workshop' as I thought there might be people out there that might want to know a bit more about the workshop and what it involves.
This workshop came about because I use watercolours to work in. People have asked how I create my artwork and so I have been trying to break my process down into stages - and in this case, workshops.
As teaching watercolour is such a huge topic and not actually possible in just an hour and a half to two hours, I wrote this workshop with that timescale in mind. What we have is a bite sized introduction to the medium of watercolour. During the workshop we play about with basic watercolour techniques and start to build confidence using the paint.
Keeping in mind the timescale, I decided we would keep things simple and only work with the colour green. We do a little bit of colour mixing within the workshop but we do it while limiting the palette.
All the kit is provided and it's yours to take away after the workshop. My main reason for running workshops is to try and help people to start or develop their creative journey. I love the concept of scaffolding you while you discover a new skill and start experimenting with it. My hope is that from this little introduction you are then able to carry on in your own time and in your own space. By giving you a goodie bag in the workshop you then have the materials to take home which hopefully enables you to pick it up again if you choose to.
A favourite subject matter of mine is woodland flora, or really anything botanical. As this is my area of interest and as we are sticking to just the colour green, it made sense to me to give the workshop a botanical theme. As we build up confidence with using the paint we start to play about with green botanical motifs. As this is an introductory workshop we work with leaf shapes and motifs (rather than accurate botanical illustration style work) and start combining these different shapes together.
I run these workshops at a range of venues and have the capacity to run workshops for small groups (up to 4) at my studio on the Shropshire/ Herefordshire border. I'm currently working on ideas for how to make this workshop more widely available - either as a kit with a workbook or as an e-course - do watch this space!
If you are interested in observational drawing (rather than painting botanical motifs), you might be interested in my workshop called 'Draw the Line' which is a beginner's drawing workshop. This is also run in a range of workshop venues and can be offered for up to 4 people at my studio.
