Susan Halley The Fine Art Guild just completed their final summer Beginner’s Acrylic Class. The instructor, Nils Johnson, did a wonderful job showing five enthusiastic painters how easy it is to finish a sunset landscape in just three hours. We started out learning about the different types of brushes and how they can be used…
Doreen Beers As the instructor, my focus was on very beginning beginners, so we concentrated on the basics. We discussed paper—the differences in quality and how paint reacts. Then we discussed the differences in paints between tube paints and cake paints and how to mix colors. We used a variety of brushes to demonstrate their…
Deborah Dougless Watercolor painting is the process of painting with pigments that are mixed with water. Of all the painting processes, watercolor art is all about thin washes and transparent color. Traditionally, watercolor artists work on paper. Oftentimes, the white of the painting surface will show through and lend itself to the glow of the…
Nancy Friedman, Co-Education Chairman Butterflies were the topic of the day when Doreen Beers demonstrated how to paint butterflies in watercolor on May 18. Her six participants learned the wet-on-wet and wet-to-dry techniques of watercolor to start their basic butterflies, and then went on to embellish them with a white gel pen and black ink.…
Deborah Dougless On May 10, a small, socially-distanced group learned various introductory techniques of watercolor. Using just a few colors and one brush, participants learned to float (layering wet paint) yellow for the leaves of a tree and then add bright blue to turn the color green. For the tree trunk, they floated brown and added blue again to give…
Deborah Dougless With Nancy Friedman and Nils Johnson using all liquid paints, especially for our Sonoran Desert Plants, two small groups that were socially distanced met on May 12 and were introduced to the color wheel. Participants learned about the primary, secondary, and tertiary relationships between colors. They also learned about hue—adding white to lighten a color; shade—adding…
Nancy Friedman, Co-Education Director On March 18, the Fine Arts Guild started Watercolor Spotlight Thursdays during which members with watercolor supplies met to paint selected subjects with Don Helmstetter as their mentor. On the first trial day, the room was filled to our 10-person COVID-limited capacity. Those participating the first Thursday were Doreen Beers, Susan Halley, Margie Calhoun,…
Nancy Friedman With a slow COVID summer, the guild started their demonstration classes again for the fall/winter season in mid-October. As of this writing, five classes have been completed along with two impromptu discussions. Ten classes were scheduled for the months of January and February with four needing to be repeated due to our limited…
In the month of February, the Fine Arts Guild sponsored two classes. Melanie Douglas taught Watercolor Techniques to a class consisting of mostly new members. Each year Melanie excites new members with her enthusiasm about watercolor and encourages them to paint with her when she is monitoring. Sometimes she converts a member from another medium…
Nancy Friedman, Secretary Tips and techniques of watercolor were the topics of a daylong class presented by Jean Forsyth from Colorado Springs. Sponsored by the Fine Arts Guild, twelve members had a great time with numerous pictures of flowers from which to paint. There were poppies, daisies, irises, tulips, peonies, and various other pictures…