Friday, 09-Dec-11 08:25:00 CET

Model Session at Aquarelmere 2011

On 24 November and 1 December we had two model sessions at Aquarelmere. The model was Hannie. Last time I organized model sessions at Aquarelmere I had been doing many more preparations. This time I had all the props in store so it was much easier from that aspect. As a result of this I was more relaxed when it came to the actual painting. It is more relaxing to let others organize a model session. That is also why it is so nice to go to de Stoker I suppose where Bas and Maroesja is organizing the model sessions or to de Kunstlinie where Iwona has a course in portrait and model. On these other places I can concentrate on only the painting.

I used these sessions at Aquarelmere to experiment with what I can do with water color. Oil color and acrylic paint let you do and redo but that is not possible with aquarelle, not so much at least. With aquarelle you need to be more direct and touch the paper just two or three times on each place of the paper. How many times you can touch the paper depends very much on the paper quality and if the paper is heavy or light and if it is done with cotton or cellulose. Books about water painting also talk about the aspect of cold pressed or not but I have not figured out how that works so I leave that.

The fact is that cotton based paper, like Arches, is much better in absorbing water so it is possible to paint wet in wet much easier. The drawback, as I find it, is that is much harder to control the process on Arches compared to cellulose paper. This is a matter of learning obviously.

For a couple of years now I have come to appreciate the Langton paper really much. It has slight cotton like touch to it but it is a cellulose paper. I use 300 grams per square meter type of paper in block with glue on the sides.

During these model sessions I also experimented with charcoal and combining charcoal and water color. Many other artists at Aquarelmere did some really nice drawings with charcoal. This was inspiring to see. So I had to try that as well.

Now we had model sessions two seasons at Aquarelmere. I think that I will need to look around for more models to pose for us. Preferably female models. The models should not live too far away because the evenings at Aquarelmere goes on until 10:00 and it will be really late if the models lives far away.