Welcome to Polly's Blog

Welcome to Polly's Blog
Watercolour, humour, this and that

Thursday 6 December 2012

HAZEL SOAN WORKSHOP

My hubs brought some lovely apples home, which reminded me of a painting I did on one of Hazel Soan's wonderful workshops.  She used all different reds for these apples. How exciting was that, when normally you add a little red here or there. It was painted on Khadi paper.  We wet each apple first and then added either transparent washes or opaque, and looked at the effect of adding a tiny amount of yellow, to give the apple a glow e.g. Cad Yellow which pushes into the red wash, or Indian Yellow,  which gives a very soft hint of gold.  Her control of the paint is so easy for her. This exercise is on her DVD The Essence of Watercolour.


 I know on her courses and holidays she usually uses a limited palette, but here she introduced me to Scarlet Lake, Quinacridone Red, Quinacridone Gold, Perylene Green and Indanthrene Blue. Yummy, as she would say!  The course was about colour, and instead of painting boring squares of this and that, we experimented (yes that is Hazel too) with these lovely hues. She explained lifting, staining, opaques etc in a  very exciting way. And did you know that opaques are easy to spot in your palette as their colour is really bright, yet the transparent ones are so dark that you can hardly tell what colour they are.

 We painted Masai, grapes, landscape, her favourite elephants etc. I now have my main palette and one with my special colours.  A very inspirational weekend.

10 comments:

  1. wonderful! what beautiful, lush colors!

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    1. Hazel makes the most simple subject look delicious. I love her guidance.

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  2. Oh lucky you. Fab painting. I bet the whole experience was tremendous fun. I've met Hazel briefly twice and she is extremely warm and approachable. Someone I would love to do a workshop with too in future.

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  3. I'm a Hazel Soan Groupie! 10min w/c dvd out in Jan. Looking forward to that

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  4. i'd love to see hazel's exhibition if i were in the uk this christmas ... must have been a super workshop polly .

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    1. I've heard she had a lots of red dots on her paintings, I am so pleased for her.

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  5. Truly delicious colors in this painting, Polly, very nicely done! I love Hazel Soan, she's one of my favorite artists. I wish I had the opportunity to be on her workshops, but the DVD is a second best - you gave me a great idea (maybe Santa will be kind enough...) Have a nice and creative week!

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    1. Thanks for your comments. I realise I am lucky. Hope Santa gets your letter in time, whatever you wish for.

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  6. Dear Polly - it is so nice to meet you. Thank you for following my blog. Took some time to look at your art and read your posts. I think this apple painting is fabulous...looks like you do have some exciting colors there. Take care and have a great day.

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    1. Thanks for taking the time to read my blog. It's lovely meeting new people and learning about others lives. Thanks again. Polly

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