14 Monday Aug 2017
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While doing a little laptop housekeeping this morning, I found a link to a forgotten video. It’s a taped segment from a two-day live workshop, Essential Birds and Flowers in Watercolor, hosted a couple of years back at the Mobile Museum of Art. The video quality is rough in spots — it was mostly recorded as a form of digital note-taking. But there’s a good demo on painting a heron using watercolor brushstrokes. I thought you might like it:
11 Friday Aug 2017
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Have you noticed the new icon — the one with the sketch of a flying eagle — in the sidebar? That’s the page where you can get illustrated printables each week. Tips on drawing dogs, painting wildflowers, sketching horses in pen and ink… the possibilities are limitless!
This week, it’s a tutorial on drawing frogs. Help yourself, and please pass the word along to anyone else who might like free art tutorials. Happy Drawing!
Click the flying eagle icon on the left side of the screen, OR this link:
05 Saturday Aug 2017
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Take up to a year to complete 10 video lessons. Each project includes beautifully illustrated printable pages and unlimited instructor feedback via email. Read the details, then email studio@valwebb.com to sign up!
Birds in Watercolor and Beyond
10 Lessons – work at your own pace
August 2017 Special Price $50
Explore new watercolor techniques (ranging from realistic to whimsical) each week as we paint birds from around the world. Topics include brushwork, color mixing, a dramatic ink resist, painting skies and clouds, painting foliage, painting on toned paper and more. No experience needed. To sign up, email me directly at studio@valwebb.com.
CLICK TO DOWNLOAD LIST OF LESSON TOPICS
CLICK TO DOWNLOAD SUPPLY LIST AND INFO PAGE 1
CLICK TO DOWNLOAD SUPPLY LIST AND INFO PAGE 2
CLICK TO DOWNLOAD SUPPLY LIST AND INFO PAGE 3
…and much more!
02 Wednesday Aug 2017
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Here’s a decorative (and fun) style of drawing birds using just three values: light, medium and dark. Click below to download a printable tip page and a set of licensed reference photos for practicing your “bird shorthand.”
Happy drawing!
31 Monday Jul 2017
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My newest online class, Drawing Children, starts August 8. Students of all art experience levels (or none at all) are welcome. For more info, click here: https://valwebb.wordpress.com/2017/06/29/new-online-course-drawing-children/
24 Monday Jul 2017
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Just two weeks to go before my new online course, Drawing Children, gets under way! Our first lesson will post on a private, password-protected website on August 8. Work at your own pace, keep your site access for a full year, and enjoy as much personal instructor feedback as you like. All levels of art experience welcome.
For more info, click here: https://valwebb.wordpress.com/2017/06/29/new-online-course-drawing-children/
22 Saturday Jul 2017
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Margaret-Ann in 1940
My mother was an award-winning magazine writer but her favorite stories were those she wrote about her own childhood. Today, on the fourth anniversary of her death, I want to share one with you. Descended from a long line of southern tale-tellers, she was the only person I have ever known who could gracefully include homemade biscuits and a shooting in the same story, with every word still completely true. Enjoy.
By Margaret-Ann Allison
“The trolley’s late today.”
She sat on the porch, shelling peas into her apron. The damp blanket of August heat pulled small curls down on her forehead from her tightly wound bun. Sixty years had added little gray to the dark brown mantle that fell around her shoulders and touched the floor when she brushed it. A promise made at the age of 12 was never broken. My grandfather had asked that she never cut her hair and only once, to snip the end of a curl to go in his watch with her picture, had scissors ever touched it.
My grandmother’s small hands, gnarled by hard work, split the pods and popped the peas into her lap faster than I could hand them to her. We had been sitting there on the glider all morning. We hadn’t talked — there had been no need for words. The metal swing kept up a squeaky cadence as we worked and bees, visiting the flower box, hummed along. The confederate jasmine was in bloom and the heavy, sweet odor washed us in perfume carried on an occasional South Carolina breeze.
“Fetch me the pot on the pie safe,” she said. “We’re nearly done shelling and Pa will be on the next trolley, ready for his lunch.”
I was glad for an excuse to go inside. It was dark and cool in the house. The drapes had been drawn against the sun and oppressive heat, but I liked the feel of the rooms. Their high ceilings and long windows made me feel like Alice in Wonderland: very small, and surrounded by wonderful things to explore. Mysterious things that had been used by my father when he was a boy. There was an empty table and seat I could climb into and pretend I was in a cave, a crystal chandelier in the dining room that sent fireflies dancing onto the walls when the swinging door to the kitchen opened just so, and the big hump-backed trunk in the closet. I had never looked in the big trunk, but I was sure it held untold treasures.
As I burst through the swinging door to the kitchen, I was hit with the aroma of an apple-cinnamon-crisp heat wave. Alma was cutting biscuits with the lid of a jelly jar on an enamel-topped table covered with flour. A rotating fan stood in the corner, moving the hot air around and sending flour drifting to the floor like snowflakes in hell.
“The trolley’s late,” I announced.
“Just as well. Biscuits ain’t done yet,” she replied, as she popped them in the oven and turned to look at me. “You look a sight! You been sweatin’ and wipin’ your face with them dirty hands. Go wash up.”
“But I’m supposed to take that pot to…”
“Never you mind. I’ll see to it while the bread’s bakin’. You run on now, and get ready for your granddaddy.”
I hurried into my least favorite room, the bathroom. The tub was too deep. I could barely see over the side, and at bath time I had to climb into it with a stool. I used the same stool to reach the tall, white sink as I washed my hands. I never figured out how to turn the round handles marked HOT and COLD without leaving dirty soap rings on them.
With face and hands reasonably clean, I decided to explore before lunch. Entering my grandparents’ closet, I walked back to the far corner where the big hump-backed trunk stood, tempting me as a Siren tempts a sailor. Thick leather straps were belted over the top, and a metal plate stared at me through its Cyclops keyhole. I pulled hard and the plate snapped open. The lid was big and heavy, but I was determined to see inside.
Pushing with all my might, I opened the lid to a storehouse of surprises. There were old books with my father’s name scratched on the covers, two dolls which must have belonged to my aunts, and tin soldiers with my uncle’s name on the box. I carefully lifted the items out and peered into the bottom of the wonderful trunk. There was another box with buckles around it. I took it out and opened it. It was lined in green velveteen gone shiny with age. Nestled in the soft fabric was a toy gun. It must have belonged to one of my uncles also.
As I stood holding the gun, my grandfather and uncle arrived for lunch. Uncle Lee was my father’s youngest brother. I was excited as he walked into the bedroom.
“Hi, Snookums. The trolley was late,” he said, as he came to see what I was playing with.
“I found some of your toys,” I said.
BANG!
The gun was long and heavy. The force of the explosion pulled it down toward the floor and I dropped it and ran. I heard Uncle Lee yell, and my grandparents came racing in from the porch, but I kept running. I ran out the back door, down the steps, into the basement and up under the house to the crawlspace.
There was talking and running upstairs. I wondered what they did to people who shot someone. Alma’s boyfriend was in prison because he cut another man in a fight, but shooting was worse than cutting and I had shot my uncle. Crying and shaking, I wondered if the police would come with their sirens screaming and all the neighbors would look out their windows and see me go off to prison.
A gentle hand patted my arm. I turned to see the concerned face of my grandfather.
“It’s all right. You can come out. No one got hurt. Lee was just frightened when he yelled. The bullet went into the floor and if you want to, we can go and look up and see if we can find the spot. Come on, now. I’ll help you.”
As my grandfather backed his six-foot-two body out from under the house, he kept saying, “It’s all right. Don’t be afraid. It’s the trolley’s fault. If it had been on time we would have been at the table, so don’t you worry. It wasn’t your fault.”
Thirty years later, I was visiting my Uncle Lee on a trip back to South Carolina. As I pulled out of his driveway to leave, I accidentally backed into his mailbox and knocked it down. He walked over to my car window.
“I guess,” he said, “you’re going to tell me that damned trolley was late again.”
29 Thursday Jun 2017
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Drawing Children
8 Lessons – work at your own pace
$65 (enrollment limited)
Email studio@valwebb.com to sign up
It’s not too hard. I promise! This course is designed for EVERYONE. If you have always wanted to draw people — or if you would like to sharpen your skills — put your hesitation aside and join me.
In eight incremental lessons (each including video and 3-5 illustrated printable pdf pages) we will cover everything you need to accurately sketch children from infant to age 5. I will also provide a library of licensed reference photos, and also advise you if you want to work from photos of your children or grandchildren.
LESSON SEQUENCE (new lessons post every other week on a password-protected website):
All lessons will be housed on a private website, with a new lesson posting every other Tuesday beginning August 8. You may keep your video access for a full year, through August 2018, and instructor feedback is always available via email.
The supply list for the course is very brief:
12 Monday Jun 2017
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Sign up before July 1 and get any two complete online art courses for $100. Start anytime, keep your site access for a full year. Unlimited instructor guidance and feedback by email.
Choices include Birds in Watercolor, Heirloom Garden in Colored Pencil, Draw Dogs & Cats, Draw and Paint Six Culinary Herbs, Draw and Paint the Enchanted World and seven more!
CLICK HERE FOR FULL LIST AND COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
20 Saturday May 2017
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Pea vines are beautiful, which makes them an ideal drawing subject. And they send out wonderful spiral tendrils, which makes them perfect for today’s project: a watercolor pea alphabet!
Think of today’s exercise as a way to playfully explore mixing shades of green and using your brush in different ways. Perfection is NOT the goal, and your pea alphabet may not resemble mine. That’s fine! (No botanical accuracy is needed, so we are going with brush strokes and not reference photos. Resist the urge to be too realistic.)
If you are new to watercolor, fill a page or two with practice strokes and swirls before working on a word.
If you are not sure of your drawing skills and you are eager to get painting, you can transfer the desired letters from our pdf to your watercolor paper. Be sure to enlarge them on your copier — I recommend drawing them around 2 inches tall for easier painting. Then cut out your letters, fill in the back side of the copy paper with a healthy coat of pencil graphite, and trace over the outlines to transfer them.
Of course, you may not want to draw the letters at all. For wild and whimsical vines, look at the Pea Alphabet pdf for inspiration and just start laying down your paint in the general twirly shapes of the letterforms.
Enjoy!
Click the links below to download illustrated printable pages:
…And a few extra tips on video. The video password is oak.
