New Jersey Art Workshops
Capture your world in watercolor.
Capture your world in watercolor.
New Jersey Art Workshops Capture your world in watercolor. |
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“Marsh Shanties” by Russ Johnson Watercolor, 8"x15" |
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| The Garden State is an outdoor painter’s paradise when you know where -- and how -- to look. Our New Jersey watercolor workshops offer beginning through intermediate students highly personalized guidance in: |
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Our New Jersey art workshops can accommodate either you alone or you and your small group of painting colleagues. You choose the dates and locations, and we’ll create a customized workshop to meet your needs. Each session is guided personally by Russ Johnson, a full-time watercolor artist and instructor who also serves as director of The New American Gallery, a leading online showcase for contemporary American art. For complete workshop information, including rates and available dates, please us or call 609-275-0633. It’s time to capture your world in watercolor! |
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| Demonstration: Three steps to better outdoor painting. When you paint outdoors, don’t aim to create a masterpiece. Just aim to have fun. Enjoy the sights, sounds, and smells of the season while capturing their essence in a simple watercolor. This demonstration painting took about 45 minutes to complete, and it contains all the basic information necessary to a more formal studio painting. A simple watercolor painting completed on location can be far more useful than a photograph when you’re working in the studio on some cold January afternoon and trying to remember what July felt like. |
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Step 1: Organize. Before you put brush to paper, organize your thoughts with a quick “value sketch.” Using a soft pencil and a small piece of scrap paper, reduce the complex scene to three values: light, mid, and dark. This value sketch will help you decide where to place maximum emphasis – often by putting your lightest and darkest values alongside each other – in order to guide the viewer’s eye. |
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Step 2: Keep the “water” in “watercolor.” Outdoor painting (also called plein air painting) lends itself to a fast, loose approach. So use plenty of water to help the paint do its thing. After soaking the paper, block in the background colors and values that will tie the composition together. At this point you can add or remove paint at will while the colors blend together in an extremely pleasing fashion. |
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Step 3: Sharpen the focus. Now it’s time to strengthen your “Look here!” message with detail, color, and value. In this demonstration painting the primary “Look here!” spot is the light barn surrounded by dark trees. The foreground is kept relatively loose and indistinct so that it doesn’t compete for attention with the painting’s primary message. |
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| For lessons in New Jersey contact Russ at: email: phone: 609-275-0633 |
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All paintings exhibited on this website are protected by U.S. and international copyright laws. No image may be reproduced in any form without the express written consent of the artist.
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