An exercise in shading —
students’ painting using my outline
(photo courtesy of Mary D.)

   
View from the second floor
   

People bring a painting alive. My classes want to put people in their landscapes, so I painted different points of view as examples. Above left, since we didn’t have a live model, as a way to teach technique I sketched two figures using tracing paper over a painting of mine. Students copied the outline by holding up watercolor paper over the sketch in a bright window. With the outline to start from, they could focus on that lesson’s techniques of watercolor shading.

Above right, I was enjoying the shadows of people walking by. It feels kind of voyeuristic to paint people if they don’t know I’m painting them, so I try to be respectful of their privacy in the artwork. I have many journals full of people I’ve sketched and those same people end up in my paintings. I cut them out and start placing them in a watercolor to get the story going.