A few spots still open for April 17-18th 2010 Painting workshop!

Upcoming Workshops in beautiful Pasadena, California. At the Concept Design Academy -


Gouache & Watercolor Painting with Erik Tiemens - April 17 -indoor lecture/demo only

Gouache & watercolor Painting with Erik Tiemens- April 17+18 with outdoor painting. Limited spaces.


If you are interested in enrolling contact the Academy at - contact@conceptdesignacad.com


http://www.conceptdesignacad.com 818-669-4657

Rapid watercolor/gouache sketch at the bay's edge. Boatyard with repair cranes and good low tide muck at the waterline to study. Grayish clouds building to a weak storm front. Additions of brush pen marker, dip pen with sepia ink and Caran D'ache water-soluble gray pencil on a Daler-Rowney sketchbook page - 65lb paper.

Pine trees near the Palace of Fine Arts museum in San Francisco. A cold breeze out, but wonderful atmospheric layering of tree groups in the distance. Sepia ink with gouache burnt umber and freshly prepared sumi ink. Exploring metal dip pens and reed pens today.

Rapid limited palette study of a river bank with active water. Hot press paper (not from a block) with an ink sketch painted out on the upper left. 5.5 x 7 inches. My daughter was painting next to me using post-it notes and watercolor.

Greetings Virtual Gouache Land followers, I wanted to let everyone know that I have redesigned my website - Watersketch.com. I will be posting info regarding prints for purchase and upcoming workshops soon. It is still a work in progress but much easier to navigate.

Happy New Year

Link: http://www.watersketch.com/

Tree trunk study from imagination. Ink, gouache, watercolor and small additions of chalk and crayon. 4x8 inches on fabriano cold press paper.

Imaginative landscape study with hunters approaching a lake side castle. Pen and wash with additions of transparent watercolors. I am trying out Winsor & Newton's large pan professional watercolors. Original on cold press Sennelier paper, 4 x 9.5 inches. This ratio is similar to a widescreen movie format like Panavision's 2:35.

Eroded cliff with exposed eucalyptus roots. 10x14", Canson -Montval watercolor paper. Limited palette with additions of red/brown ink, gouache white, light gray and transparent watercolors.

Small ink, watercolor & gouache sketch from life. A grouping of eucalyptus trees with various sapling undergrowth. Fabriano paper.

Large 24"x18" warm up sketch 20mins over abstract transparent doodles. This was a class demo while everyone was warming up. Starting very transparent then mix gouache into the wet washes.

Part III. Color Warm ups and example of sketch to larger color painting.

Gouache & Watercolor class Part II. (two images are from last year's class, the stormy cliff sketches and wide format gouache/wc image.

What a fantastic workshop last weekend up in Mendocino, California. There was 21 students who signed up and I tried to do as many demos as I could muster. We also had several hour sessions to sketch outside and take in nature. The focus of the class was to take these sketches and work on variation from memory in small warm up sketch paintings. Everyone was a good sport when some sprinkles rolled in. Wonderful work by everyone! Various sketches, photos of the area and workshop pictures to share.

Experimental composition with Prussian blue under painting and additions of India ink - pen work. Zinc white gouache was used to build up opaques. This is a hybrid of English and Dutch landscape influences from the 1600's to 1800's. (6x9 inches on Cold press W/C paper)

I will be going over techniques in my class this weekend on how to improve usability of outdoor rapid sketches and employing them in the studio for more elaborate small format paintings that capture complex lighting situations.

To mix things up a bit I wanted to share an oil study I made this summer on the east coast. Pretty small, 5x9 inches or so, linen mounted on wood panel with a middle warm gray ground. Rapid painting on location. I love the lush greens in Connecticut and all of New England for that matter. There was so much rain in June, that this was a rare moment to brave the elements and capture a small slice of nature.

Some recent sketchbook entries.... some of these are master studies for warm ups. Pen & ink work as well.


On another note I wanted to give folks interested a heads up for a Fall workshop:

Greetings Art Enthusiasts!
I wanted to let you all know about a special fall workshop I'm teaching at the Mendocino Art Center.
Their website: http://www.mendocinoartcenter.org/PSS_Cart.54.LassoApp?category=189&feature2=Fall
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September 12 - 13, 2009
INTERMEDIATE - ADVANCED GOUACHE AND WATERCOLOR PAINTING WORKSHOP
Erik Tiemens

Class begins Saturday, September 12th. Two day weekend workshop meets Saturday and Sunday, 9:30 am to 4:30 pm. Tuition: $180 (members may take a $25 discount on one workshop per year).

From the smallest thumbnail sketch to more finished works in the field, discover the importance of planning and seeing more options in your compositions, color palettes and tonal combinations before committing time on larger studio paintings. The workshop will go over techniques to previsualize your final idea and truly see the many options a location can inspire in a final painting. By combining the best of gouaches opaque-change friendly qualities with watercolors transparent subtlety, you can work more efficiently in capturing lighting, atmosphere and tonal information.

Material List Here: www.virtualgouacheland.blogspot.com

It's going to be inspiring to paint in Mendocino- I hope some of you can come!
Best, Erik

Today a stiff wind danced across a nearby coastal valley with rolling fog dissolving edges of this tree study. Sepia & burnt sienna watercolor washes with pen & ink on hot press Sennelier calligraphy paper - a nice lush vellum like surface.

Recent figure study in watercolor and gouache, with small additions of pen. 4"x6" hot press block.

This is inspired by Thomas Gainsborough's sketches that show his interest in Poussin, Hobbema, Ruisdael, Wijnants and others. Gainsborough primarily used Dutch principles of design (with a touch of Fragonard), to create a unique vision all his own. I find it wonderful that he would compulsively find bits of coal, lichen and even broccoli plants for trees and then add mud/dirt to create invented landscapes as a model to work from. This he would set up on a small wooden table in his studio under candle light.

-Erik

Developing compositions loosely with watercolor, gouache - Zinc white, with small additions of pastel and pen and ink on some of the drawings/paintings. Very rapid studies in the 4" - 6" range. Most of the work on Fabriano Ingres paper with a laid style of paper, along with Arches hot press 90lb paper.