The Painted Prism: DURANGO WATERCOLOR WORKSHOP 2018 at Vallecito

This year's Durango Watercolor Workshop was held at the Willson's beautiful property near Lake Vallecito, on August 17, 18, 19, 2018.

Sketching the beautiful outdoors

We started out the day with our coffee in the Great Room, talking about the workshop as a whole, and the project for the day, Botanical Triptychs --

We then moved into the Painting Studio, set up our painting stations, and began the project by preparing the long skinny paper and painting the warm underpainting with salt texture added.

Example of a botanical illustration by Pat

While the under paintings were drying, we moved outside with our sketchbooks and chairs, to sketch different subjects to use as references for our paintings.

Everyone spent two good hours, observing and drawing, so that they had a few pages of references to use when they got back to the studio.

So much to see and draw -- in the garden and all around the property. It was nice to not have to decide on just one thing to draw and paint.

After about two hours of sketching, it was time to move back indoors. The salt was brushed off the dried underpaintings, and it was time to draw our subjects.

Pat talked about botanical illustration, showed how to divide the paper for the triptych, and laid out even more references to use, besides the sketches.