Looking Back and Looking Ahead.

Each week in both my watercolor classes at the Palette and Chisel Academy in Chicago, and in Kaneville, I do a step-by-step demonstration of a landscape. After selecting a photograph of a subject, I make adjustments and corrections using photo editing software.  The painting is explained to the students step by step.
Each subject is a lesson in either composition, color, perspective, techniques or materials.

The ability to teach, answer questions, and paint at the same time presents unique challenges, but the reward is that I get to paint in every class. Reflecting back on the past year, I realize I did over 100 demonstraton paintings -some turned out well -and some not so good. Hopefully though, each one imparted something helpful to the students -a better undersanding of how to begin a painting, through to a more confident, satisfying completion of a painting. 

I am posting a few here that may help you as you go forward in this new year. In the following four examples, you can see the fundamental steps: the original photograph, the adustments to the photograph, the pattern of the composition and step 1, 2 and the final. In some cases, a few additional steps are added as finishing touches.

Happy painting in 2017!
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