Staying Loose

First, I want to say thank you to all my students who made the first annual Carol Jessen Boothbay Harbor Watercolor Workshop a great success  You worked hard, played hard, and ate and drank well!  Let's do it again next year!

One of the goals stated by the students was to learn how to stay loose.  Here are five suggestions:

1.  Keep the background simple, perhaps painting it wet-into-wet (dry-into-wet).

2.  Find several places to soften your edges.  Hard edges need the contrast of soft edges.

3.  Use larger brushes for the first two thirds of the painting process.  That will cause you to think in terms of large and middle sized shapes.

4.  Paint standing up.  Swinging your arm instead of rotating your wrist will keep your strokes longer and more fluid. 

5.  Hold your brush farther down the handle.  The more you hold your brush like a pencil, the tighter your strokes will tend to be.

Happy splashing!