Watercolor and Plants – Canceled

Watercolor and Plants: Using Natural Forms as Inspiration for Finding Your Voice in Watercolor

Fee: $190

Canceled

Join artist Zuzka Vaclavik for the first watercolor series to take place in the new Center for Art and Nature. She will teach different watercolor techniques and participants will be able to use both the garden and museum spaces for inspiration. Zuzka received her MFA from The University of Georgia in 2008 and since then has exhibited her work in Cambodia, Germany, Austria and across the United States. Zuzka held her first solo exhibition entitled Thirst in Atlanta through Poem 88 Gallery in 2015. Her works are in numerous public and private collections, including the permanent collection at the High Museum of Art.

SESSION 1: Using Washes and Simplifying Plant Forms

In this class we will learn how to effectively use washes (one of the foundational skills of watercolor) as a jumping-off point to rendering various plant forms we find in the garden. We will explore ways to simplify complex botanical morphologies into clean and bold shapes.

SESSION 2: Wet into Wet Application of Watercolor and Lyrical Mark Making using Tropicals

In this session, we will explore the nature of water as it relates to watercolor painting and the tropical plant collection (esp. orchids) in order to discover how to create expressive paintings. This class will focus on learning to use the amazing pattern and colors of the natural world as a jumping-off point for your own work.

SESSION 3: A Closer Look into Color and Pattern in the Natural World

During this class, we will go outside into the gardens and learn how to keep a record/journal of various patterns and colors in the natural world and how they can later be used as jumping-off points for various artistic projects- such as ceramics, jewelry, quilting, fabric design, graphic design, etc. How do artists use and record what they see for later inspiration?

SESSION 4: Using Pointillism Techniques to Tackle Complicated Landscapes

In our final class, we will look at the garden landscape as a whole and explore the use of pointillist watercolor techniques to begin to learn how to tackle the visually complex subject matter, such as trees or busy scenes from afar. How do different patterns and colors relate to one another? How can we break apart the landscape and begin to understand how different natural elements come together to form a whole?