PAINT and PENCILS

Combining watercolours and colour pencils for a range of subjects.

Join us for our monthly ‘Picnic and Paint’ on the Deck with lunch catered by BillyKart Restaurant –

your ticket includes a $20 Voucher towards your picnic lunch!

Materials to Bring

• Watercolour supplies: Paint – a range of professional quality watercolours in your preferred brand. (Please don’t compromise on quality!)  Alternatively, 3 primary colours will suffice eg. MaimeriBlu: Primary Yellow, Primary Red Magenta and Primary Blue Cyan or Holbein: Permanent Yellow Light, Quinacridone Red and Phthalo Blue Yellow Shade or Daniel Smith: Hansa Yellow Medium, Quinacridone Rose and Phthalo Blue Green Shade.
• Watercolour brushes in a variety of sizes. Include a hake or mop brush for large areas. Paper –You will require 300gsm watercolour paper in Medium (Cold Pressed) or Smooth (Hot Pressed). My recommendation is to buy a watercolour block as the paper is already stretched. ¼ or ½ sheet size is fine. (About A4 –A3) Quality brands are Arches, Saunders Waterford or Fabriano. Student quality paper just doesn’t work well. Make sure the paper is 100% Cotton. Two A4 sheets will be plenty for this workshop.
• Palette – The large plastic palettes with lots of wells and a lid are my recommendation. Make sure it has a large enough mixing area.
• Board –Larger than your paper and something to prop up under one end for working at an angle. It needs to be perfectly smooth for using with colour pencils.

Other Necessities – Drawing equipment (pencils, kneadable eraser (not the hard plastic erasers), ruler etc, plus pen and paper for taking notes), 1 sheet of graphite transfer paper (not carbon paper), an old towel or hand towel, tissues, 2 plastic containers for water, and masking tape. A medicine dropper or plastic pipette for squirting small amounts of water would also be handy.

Pencils Information

NOTE | Aquarelle Pencils will be available for purchase in the Studio along with paper and watercolour paints as needed!

• Colour Pencil supplies: Pencils – Bring as large a range as possible of aquarelle (water soluble pencils), at least 36 but more is preferably, and other non-aquarelle pencils if you already own them. Suggested aquarelle brands are Faber-Castell Albrecht Durer watercolour pencils, or Caran D’Ache Supracolor or Prismacolor Premier Watercolor or Cretacolor Aqua Monolith.
• Other non-aquarelle choices are Prismacolor, Faber-Castell Polychromos, Derwent Coloursoft and any other professional brand. If you have a large selection of pencils that are water-soluble, you can use them for all ‘dry’ techniques and won’t need to purchase the other non-aquarelle type.

Other Useful tools

Sharpener – I highly recommend the desk-type rotary sharpeners. They cost about $40-$50, but are well worth the expense. Available from some art stores, Officeworks and other stationers. Derwent makes a cheaper one that works well. Otherwise, the small, all metal sharpeners will do. Buy the pencils first and then check that they will fit the holes in the sharpener. (The Derwent Artist Pencils, for example, will not fit all sharpeners.)

New soft- bristle brush – 2” wide or larger. For brushing away pencil crumbs. This is to be kept separate from your watercolour brushes.

Eraser – I’ve found the only tool that can remove colour pencil effectively is an electric eraser. Battery operated ones are available by Derwent, or Mont Marte from some discount stores or other ones from Smiggle stores. I will bring some to share.

A ‘dud’ photograph or transparency or acetate sheet – For using under your drawing hand to prevent smudging your masterpiece.

Optional surfaces include: Smooth mat board (the kind used for framing), cold or hot pressed illustration board, watercolour board, Ampersand Aquabord and cradled wood boards. There’s no need to go out and buy these, but are purely optional if you already own any.

References: I will supply references for group studies but you are welcome to bring any copyright-free images of your choosing for a personal project.

Working With – Jan Lawnikanis – Artist

In her personal art career, Jan’s beautifully presented work in various mediums has won many first prizes and other awards. Her commissions range from school theatre sets to a set for the QLD Conservatory of Music, 40 artworks for an apartment building, 15 artworks for an office floor, paintings for a restaurant as well as school murals and private works for client’s homes.

Jan has been the featured artist in Australian Artist Magazine, with 5 full-length articles on using coloured pencils. Other publications include the Paradise Magazine-GC Bulletin, Art Newsflash, International Watercolour Institute catalogue, Art Edit magazine, the Australian Coloured Pencil Network and Artwise textbook for the Australian School Curriculum.

I love to teach art! It is always a thrill seeing students improve in leaps and bounds. I relish the opportunity to pass on everything I have learnt in the past 25 years of producing art and teaching it. Gratefully, students often comment that they have learnt more in my workshops than any previously. On a personal level, my passion is about finding truth and beauty in the natural world, conveying the amazing effects of light and shadows, and using colour to advantage.