I'm one of those people who loves to buy art supplies but rarely ever actually does any art... ing. So here's me, trying to learn how to finally put all that money to good use!

Watercolor exercises - image 1 - student project

This one uses Sennelier tube paints. I think these are some of my favorites because it's so smooth and easy to work with even on terrible paper!

Watercolor exercises - image 2 - student project

This one uses some Daniel Smith, which is really outside of my price range all things considered. But these particular ones are the gemstone ones. The green is Green Apatite (which has the green and browns all mixed together) and the red is Garnet Genuine.

Watercolor exercises - image 3 - student project

Some of the rest of the worksheet is here. All of this is also Sennelier.

Watercolor exercises - image 4 - student project

I started using some of my Prima Marketing palette, which has some of the most amazing colors, but I think when I was mixing them I didn't get enough color. I also don't have any really opaque white, though I tried. It ended up softening the colors instead of making stars. lol. I need to learn how to keep the edges wet (maybe I shouldn't paint next to an open window... whoops!)

Watercolor exercises - image 5 - student project

This is also Prima marketing watercolors. I tried using a toothbrush to make the spray of "stars" in the white and was a little too close to the paper. This is one I will have to try again a few more times because I am absolutely terrible at being patient and using better control over the brush. But the colors are lovely!

Watercolor exercises - image 6 - student project

This is Sennelier and Daniel Smith again. I skipped ahead because I really REALLY wanted to paint this. I will need to learn to be a little bit better, but was playing around with trying to use lighter colors and get a gradient (I didn't really DO that for most of it though).

This has been the exact sort of class I'd been looking for, really. I needed some sort of direction because I didn't really want to only paint flowers and leaves (though I love doing that too). I'm terrible at just coming up with stuff to paint off the top of my head, so these exercises are really great.

Thank you so much to Maya for this class. I can't wait to see what else you put out there!

Added: I decided to try all of the projects again to see if I had really learned anything and I feel like everything turned out even better! I picked up some opaque white paint and some smaller paint brushes. I also decided to use some better paper. Though I used paint that wasn't as high quality, I feel like these turned out even better than the first round. This class and the projects/worksheets have helped me in many ways, including pointing me in the direction I want to go with painting.

Watercolor exercises - image 7 - student project

Prima Marketing paints (Worksheet) again.

Watercolor exercises - image 8 - student project

Prima Marketing paints with Dr. Ph. Martin's bleedproof white (makes much better splatter and stars!).

Watercolor exercises - image 9 - student project

Prima Marketing paint with Dr. Ph. Martin's Bleedproof white.

Watercolor exercises - image 10 - student project

I used the final card and made it a full circle (with some less-than-good modifications) and it turned out so much better than I would have expected.

Lee Olesky

Learning to do the art thing

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