2018 The Excitement Begins!

 Study and first wash for an elephant painting in watercolour

 The excitement begins! After a day spent on administration, yesterday, filling cancellation spaces on my UK workshops today was the day I could literally throw myself into my studio painting time experimenting and literally having a blast. When I away am on tour  as I have been recently I give my all, in fact I do in every single workshop but I will openly confess there is a point during each workshop day where I feel very envious. I will have worked so hard to get everyone in the class as highly motivated,excited and inspired as possible but while inspiring others my own artists soul is leaping and desperately wanting to paint too. When I am in a room teaching I believe I belong to the room so I put my personal painting time aside and spend every second teaching. This leads me to times like now where I have the luxury of experimenting, building on ideas to ensure my next workshops are really fascinating. I just can't sit still with ideas. And after this last tour I came home with lots of colour ideas and great new products to try.

So today whilst painting a quick warm up wash I could easily see it would turn into an elephant and it did. I was actually cleaning my palette and the mucky collection of colours placed in a line across a large old piece of paper made the best starting point ever for an elephant to appear. Which it did as seen below. But this warm up led me to a colour great wash experiment.

 Getting to know my subject before painting a large composition

 At the moment I am thrilled with my warm up washes, as seen at the opening of each of my workshops but now, oh boy how they have changed. The break up of pigment is greater and the patterns forming are far more thrilling. As seen below. This first wash has been created deliberately as a base for a painting of a group of elephants. I have a solo show  later this year and I'm working on a few ideas that will add to my collection in unexpected ways.

The exciting first wash inspired by my study of an elephant in watercolour

Anyone who attended my workshops on my recent USA tour will instantly recognise the use of Daniel Smiths' Australian Red Gold, a shade I now adore but here it plays with Daniel Smith Amethyst Genuine creating unusual patterns and pigment formations. 

I always advise on my workshops that if you create a magical first wash that you love, paint another as close as possible to the original straight away whilst the colours you used are still clearly in your mind. Which is exactly what I am going to do right now!

This year is off to a great start. Do look out for my new book, even though the theme is flowers the techniques inside are inspiring my new work and pushing me in a fabulous direction art wise. I hope it makes you feel the same way too. Excited about painting!

I am!

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I must add that all cancellation places on my UK 2018 workshops have been filled, and once payment is made each place will be confirmed but I am keeping a wait list in case further cancellations arise so now is a good time to get in touch if you wish to be on that list!

jeanhaines@hotmail.com

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