Paint the Great Outdoors – course 2 day 2

In the second day of our Painting outdoors course with artist Matthew Krishanu we went from painting together on a grand scale….

to some more focussed drawing activities,  

with one continuous line

and the hand we don’t normally draw with…

…and some tiny watercolours.

Here we focussed 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

and ducks, 

and people!

Meanwhile Matthew worked with the others on some textile paining. We mixed oil pastel with watery acrylic paint.

Using tissues to dap 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 looked at more artists for inspiration…John Constable and Piet Mondrian.We used a drippy wash for a background

Layered more watery paint so the colours ran.

Then added thicket 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.