Month: October 2017

Our First Workshop

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Finally had time to sit down and blog! We joined The Craft Central’s 1st Birthday Celebration at Greenbelt 5 last September 26 to October 1 as January Makers PH. We held our first watercolor workshop there!

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I was honestly terrified teaching a workshop. First, I’m not sure with the basics of watercolor since it wasn’t taught formally back in college. Second, it was my first time to teach students who paid (lol, I had tons of guinea pigs though). Third, I was scared that my students won’t learn a thing from me. Finally, I’m an introvert so I had NO IDEA if I could pull it off.

Me, explaining the color wheel.

Thankfully, my stage muthers/a.k.a. the rest of the January Makers PH team: Jean, Monique, and Hannah were there to help me out the whole time. They helped with the paper cups filled with water, took photos while I was teaching, and also helped with the cleanup after the workshop. They were my support throughout the day. ♥

Karen, starting with the color wheel.

After the quick introduction, we started with the color wheel. Learning the color wheel is one of the fundamentals. It would help in color choices and also for paint mixing.

Shayne, starting with her sunflower!

Learning how to draw a sunflower is easy. They also joked about my methods. Step 1 is “draw a circle”. Step 2 is “draw a tear drop shape”. Step 3 is “surround circle with a lot of tears”. HAHA.

Busy, busy.

I also let them try my seamountainco palette so they could see the difference with student grade paints to artist grade paints. They also had their own seamountainco dot cards that were included in the workshop. Thanks again, Jean! ♥

The rest of the workshop I went around to check & guide them one-on-one. Most of the participants were beginners, so I had to check & comment with their progress. Even though I taught them my style of painting, their own style showed through! ♥

Jade’s painting. | Karen’s painting.

Shayne’s painting. | Celso’s painting.

Katya’s painting. | Paola’s painting.

Gillian’s painting. | Sam’s painting.

My own painting plus Katya’s watercolor paper given to me. Thank you so much! ♥

The final homework for the students. Beautiful lettering & pouch from Jade.

Overall, it was a great learning experience! I think I still need to improve on conveying my thoughts to people. I hoped my students learned something watercolor-related from me. I heard they learned life lessons from my workshop?!

Thank you to The Craft Central for the workshop opportunity and venue. To my January Maker sisters. To my students. And to my guinea pigs lol I learned something from teaching you guys hahaha. ♥

Hopefully I could improve some more & organize another workshop. ♥

Everything Old

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Whew! With so many things happening in real life, I finally had time to sit down and blog. Since I’m still waiting for our photos during my first workshop with the January Makers PH team, I’ll do this post first lol.

A month ago, I found my old Reeves gouache paints. Thinking that it was a waste to throw them out, I decided to use them with my expired paper for practice. Here are some of the artworks that I did:

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Sunflower & Peonies.

I tested my old materials by painting a sunflower first. The Reeves gouache is still usable, but it stinks! I like the brightness of the colors though. The next paintings were of course peonies. Knowing that all of the materials that I used were old, I could practice all I want without any worries of wasting my art materials HAHA.

First and second attempt. ♥

I posted something about this on Instagram:

When you don’t like your first attempt, it’s always okay to start again. 😁 It doesn’t have to be perfect everytime.

Some hydrangea studies.

Because sometimes its okay to paint with “careless, free, loose” strokes. ❤ The important thing is you enjoy what you’re doing. 😊

With hydrangeas, I was exploring on making looser strokes that would still look presentable. Wet on wet, layering, and my usual style. The third photo was a good study for my latest sticker.

Overall, I’m satisfied with experimenting on old art materials. It shows that you really don’t need high end stuff to make great work. There’s also no guilt of wasting expensive paper for practice haha. With this, let me end the post with their ages:

  1. Paper: Canson 200 gsm watercolor paper cut into smaller pieces. Age: 6 years.
  2. Reeves Gouache. Age: 15 years.
  3. Brush: Faber Castel freebie from the watercolor pencil set. Age: 12 years.