Composition and Depth of Field – Using Colour

Join me for our Fish Lane Studios – South Brisbane Qld
Picnic and Paint – 11th May 2024

10am to 2pm

– with a delicious picnic thanks to our neighbour on the Deck of 4 Edmondstone Street South Brisbane –

Birds Nest Yakitori Japanese – Restaurant

Your Lunch is included in your Ticket price!

So for this Workshop, we will look at this and other café scenes from images we have captured on our holidays in Europe and understand what attracted us to these places ………… apart from the memory of what happened there!

In the image above the colours of the umbrellas, the flowers and the fruit all add pops of colour – as we look at the composition of this Market we will analyse how these colours add to the depth of field in the photo and subsequently in our paintings.

One of the exciting things when you travel is to have images that remind you of a moment – in this case I was excited when I found this shot I had taken, of a local Market in Zagreb – though I am now in two minds as to whether it was Osijek …… but not to worry, I just remember the treats we bought some yummy goats cheese – some hard cheese and some Krapfen …. these are like fluffy doughnuts but somehow better!  When we found these Krapfen, Norbert got all excited as his Oma used to make them – so these were obviously something special to try!

So the memory of this Market is a very happy one and we can now take this image and analyse the details – to look at creating another memory of this magic place by painting it!

The intriguing thing is that despite it is raining in the Market there is life and depth to the image – due to the pops of colour that emerge as we study to photo.

Krapfen – I might try my hand at making them for morning tea – not promises we will see!

Materials to Bring:

• 1 sheet Arches 300gsm Watercolour Paper 

• Or Some 300gsm Arches pad or sheet paper to try out ideas – again experimental so these can be scraps from other Work if you have them!

Watercolour Paint – Watercolour Pencil Colours –

• Ultramarine Blue
• Indigo
• Cadmium Yellow – Deep
• Phthalo Blue
• Quinacridone Gold or Australian Red Gold
• Alizarin Crimson and/or Deep Cadmium Red – or similar colours

Also Bring – these important items to ink up!

• Black Waterproof Pigment Ink – bottle
• A nib pen to work your ink onto the paper

Brushes – at least those below –

but please bring whatever you have in your kit:

• 1 x 1/2 inch Angle cutter would be useful for these Botanicals
• 1 x wide wash brush – for wet work, and
• 1 x wide wash brush – Goat Hair recommended – for dry work
• 1 x Squirrel Needle point or Chinese style calligraphy brush for detailed line work and layering of your colours

Other Tools:

• 1 x old kitchen spray bottle – washed out and ready to have clean water to spray across your paints – I recommend an old ‘Windex’ Bottle of similar to give you a good spray of water.
• a 2B pencil and if you would like a rubber
• Hair dryer to dry your work between layers
• Backing board to tape your sample papers down (core board or similar from Bunnings) and tape to manage your paper – we don’t use an easel we tape the paper to the backing board so we can move the paper and tilt or turn as needed to manage your paint and water.
• Plenty of paper towel to wipe up any spills!