No matter the season nature holds inspiration for your art and possible subjects for your botanical sketchbook.
For me autumn can be melancholy because I’m saying goodbye to my garden for the year. Even so there is beauty in the ending of the season. Seeds and nuts, dying leaves and plants, all have interesting colors, textures and shapes that can inspire art.
The demonstrations in this class are done with watercolor, but I also give suggestions for using other media in your sketchbook to capture the beauty of the season.
Skills:
- Be open to and discover inspiration in the natural world no matter what the season. Look for:
- Color
- Shapes
- Textures
- Let go of perfectionism and any pressure to create “perfect looking pages”.
- Look at sketchbooks as a place to explore, experiment, play, be curious and have fun.
- Learn which materials will work best for creating botanical watercolor sketchbook pages and see examples and suggestions for using other media in your botanical sketchbook.
- Learn to capture the beauty of the season in a very low-pressure way by creating simple spreads of colorful, nature-inspired swatches.
- Mix and match colors with watercolor on your palette.
- Learn wet on wet techniques with watercolor to allow colors to mix on paper.
- Learn how to know when the watercolor on your paper is fully dry.
- Learn how to gain depth of color by layering wet watercolor over dry paint.
- Learn how to create a more finished look to your rough watercolor sketches by adding a few fine details.
- Think about composition of your sketchbook pages and learn what combinations of objects create the most eye-catching displays. Discover simple tricks to help you plan out your page before you start painting without having to create a pencil sketch first.
- Gain confidence in creating in your sketchbook by starting with very simple pages and working up to more complex compositions.
