Doing Wonders With Watercolour!

The Different Types

Did you know that there are different kinds of watercolour paints to choose from? There are several types:

1. Pallets
2. Traditional cream tubes
3. Pencils
4. Crayons
5. Inks or liquids

Each type of medium can give your work a range of different outcomes, especially when you apply them using various techniques. You can change the look by the amount of diluting that occurs using colour, the use of different brushes, layering colours at different drying stages, and applying colour to a range of watercolour papers. Using a spray bottle with water can disperse the paint and even adding a pinch of salt over your piece can create snowflake droplets, adding texture to your piece.

Versitility

Using a medium like watercolours allows you to create motion and movement into your work and can be combined with other mediums such as oil pastels, ink, chalk, pen, and oil paint to create amazing multi-media art pieces!

Paul Klee: Watercolour and Multi-Medium Artist

Swiss-born Paul Klee is an artist who has used watercolour to create abstract explorations in Expressionism and Cubism. His travels to Tunisia and his background as a violinist no doubt influenced his work in pattern and colour exploration. You can read more about his biography here on this website.

In Emerging From the Gray of Night (1918), he uses ink and watercolours:

Paul Klee – Once Emerged from the Grey of Night, 1918

Here, Klee applies watercolour using a spatula in The Future Man (1933):

Paul Klee The Future Man 1933

In Fish Magic (1925), Klee mixes two mediums – oil and watercolour – and covers it in varnish:

Paul Klee Fish Magic (1925)

Klee uses watercolour on a chalk background in Hermitage (1918):

Paul Klee Hermitage (1918)

Klee deliberately layers shades of watercolour as it dries to create degrees of colours in his work Crystal Gradation (1921):

Paul Klee Crystal Gradation 1921

In the Studio This Week

Whether you want to come and explore the multimedia or layering techniques of Paul Klee, the vibrant inks for art journaling pages or prefer to experiment with more muted tones of pallets for composing a landscaping painting, we welcome you to try our vast array of watercolour materials in our art studio! Gentile guidance is available: how to add colour to your page, how to set up a sky, how to paint trees, or even learn how to start calligraphy or adding salt to your pages. Come and join us this week!

It’s all about Painting Pictures with Paper!

We’re painting pictures in the studio this week by exploring images and creating them using paper. Paper is extremely versatile and comes in different colours, textures, thicknesses, finishes, and weights. From simple to elaborate, a paper collage can be a really fun way to experiment creatively and try something different for a change.

Choose from our variety of papers: magazines, sheets of music, origami paper, scrapbooking paper, wax paper, coffee filters, tissue paper, wall paper, corrugated paper, cardboard, foil, dress making paper patterns and even good old tractor feed computer paper! Use these to create a vast array of finished collage projects. Come with your own ideas, or be inspired by some of our in-studio examples. Here are some neat artists who are known for their paper arts and a few examples of paper pictures to get you started!

Artist and activist Sandhi Schimmel Gold uses 100% hand-cut recycled paper waste material, such as magazines, newsprint, greeting cards, and flyers and transforms them into paper portraits with a strong message:

“My work reflects society’s obsession with beauty in advertising. My junk-mail mosaic portraits are a purposeful intermix of thousands of pieces — images and text — hand cut and manipulated to assemble a newly envisioned portrayal of beauty, utilizing materials that would otherwise go to waste.”
– Sandhi Schimmel Gold

Schimmel Art

For amazing collage sculptures that are made by layering paper cuttings and applying gauche for detail, check out local Victoria artist Morgana Wallace!

Morgana M Wallace

Here are a few neat paper collage images!

Painting pictures using paper is a great way to expand your repertoire of techniques, and also to get out of a creative rut. As painters, sometimes we feel stuck in a medium, or like we end up painting the same thing over and over again. Using a different medium forces our brain to exercise another part of itself, and often creativity pours out because we’ve uncorked a blockage. We’d love for you to join us at our Open Studio Sessions this week on Monday from 6-9pm or Wednesday from 10am-1pm. See you there!

Picasso and Cubism – Our Inspiration at Open Studio Sessions this week

Welcome your week with a little bit of whimsy and fun! Homage to Cubism and Picasso’s Rooster!

Spanish artist, Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), is well known for introducing the principles of cubism in artwork, where classical ways of depicting the natural world are deconstructed and reassembled, highlighting abstract shapes and their multiple and simultaneous viewpoints. Picasso is perhaps most well-known for his two cubism pieces “Les Demoiselles d”Avignon (1907)” and “Three Musicians (1921)”. Picasso’s rooster, suitably named,“The Rooster (Le Coq, 1938)” is a work of art that lingers in between a classical depiction of the bird itself and a cubist reconstruction of it. Here, Picasso uses line both in a mix of fluidity of form, juxtaposed with representations of only the basic elements of a rooster (eyes, beak, wings, tail feathers, legs, feet), omitting naturalistic details.

This provides us with an example of how Picasso embarked on creating a cubist style. This week come and learn more about Pablo Picasso, his work, and try your hand at learning the principles of cubism for yourself. You can use our lovely countryside bird as your inspiration to create a rooster, or you can deconstruct objects of your choosing by bringing something from home or selecting something from our in-studio still-life collection. As always, we have a vast array of watercolour mediums, chalk pastels, acrylic paints, oil pastels, air drying clay, a selection of mixed paper at your disposal. Those who would prefer working on independent projects are welcome to do so and have full access to the art studio as always!

Let your inner Picasso come to life! A great project for all ages. Have a look at a few of these examples!

Here is my rendition of Picasso’s Rooster (clay), that will be in the studio as inspiration: