Lifebook weeks 10 and 12

Week 10 was a lovely lesson from Effy Wild - a tree created with lots of layering and glazing. I folowed the demonstration videos very closely for this lesson, so I can't take any credit for the design right down to the colour choices. The glazing was amazingly effective, it's a technique where you have to plan ahead - creating underpainting to glaze over. When I paint on canvas it's usually not very planned, I kind of do a random underpainting just to cover the blank canvas, and then see what that suggests and turn it into something! There is a lot of relying on chance and hoping that inspiration will appear... On the other hand when I do a linocut it's carefully drawn out and planned in advance, so maybe I could get my head around planning out a painting to use glazing!

I spent so long on week 10 that I didn't get around to the week 11 lesson.

Week 12 was a watercolour with Susana Tavares. Watercolour is a medium I'm not confident with - particularly because you can't go over your mistakes! So I  was surprised how much I enjoyed this lesson and learned a lot. Again I followed the demonstration very closely.

I do feel a bit ambivalent about copying the lessons so closely. I guess in the past that's how artists learned to paint, by copying old masters. These days it's all about being original, doing something new, it's hard to put that attitude aside. If nothing else I'm putting together a folder of techniques that will be a great reference for me in the future.