Paint the Great Outdoors II - Day 2

Tuesday, 1 August 2017

In Day 2 of our Paint the Great Outdoors course in South Park Gardens, with artist Matthew Krishanu, we went from painting together on a grand scale, to some more focussed drawing activities. Drawing with one continuous line and the hand we don't normally draw with…

… and then painting with some tiny watercolours. Here we focused on colour, skills for using watercolours and using a tiny brush.

Millie worked with a group to transform leaves into creatures, and sticks into play things, ducks, and people! 

Meanwhile, Matthew worked with the others on some textile painting. We mixed oil pastel with watery acrylic paint. Using tissues to dab away paint, we revealed the oil pastel underneath.

They looked beautiful drying in the wind on our washing line!

After lunch, Matthew introduced more techniques for layering acrylics onto a canvas board. We also looked at more artists for inspiration... John Constable and Piet Mondrian.

We used a drippy wash for a background. Layering more watery paint so that the colours ran. Then added thicker paint on top, building up the layers as we went.

Some pieces came from our imagination, some were more expressive, and some were very closely observed from the gardens around us.

As we finished we used our primed boards from yesterday to paint portraits of the surrounding trees. We pinned them to each tree.

And in true South Park Gardens tradition, we made some beautiful patterns on the pavements, using leaves and petals to inspire some rangoli style drawing. 

We then arranged all our work for our visitors to see. We were very proud of everything we had achieved.