Purely Pencils II - Purely Perfect

Week Two of my holidays saw myself and a friend visiting Australia's capital Canberra to do a calligraphic workshop with the ever talented Gemma Black.

The workshop was called Purely Pencils II and it was purely perfect.

The first day of the workshop saw us participating in an exercise called from Nature to Paper. We had been instructed to bring with us to the workshop, for day one, a flower and some of its foliage. The idea being that nature gets colour schemes right.
There is the perennial question whether sense of colour is innate or it has to be learnt by any artist. Gemma explained to us that if we are ever in doubt of a colour scheme just step into your garden and you will find the right colour combinations.
My flower and it's foliage was the Banksia. We were given an exemplar of Charles Rennie Mackintosh style letters and created the first letter of the flower in this script with a patterned background. Then it was on to determine the colours in the plant and match them to our watercolour pencils. We used watercolour pencils for the exercise because they were harder then other water-soluble pencils. Here was the exercise, looking clearfully at the plant and working out which colours we could see. I had a limited palette but had to mix greens to ensure that I had the closest I could get.

Colour from the Garden - Initial work up - Artist - Cathy Sayer - Copyrighted

Once we had worked out our colour scheme and created a swatch (with some expert guidance from Gemma) it was now a matter of colouring in the pattern we had created with the colours on our swatch, ensuring we obtained the right balance.
I don't know about anybody else but there is something comforting in colouring in. Whether it takes us back subconsciously to our childhood or it makes us slow down but there was a quiet in room and the tension just seemed to ease away.

Colour from the Garden - Step Two - Artist - Cathy Sayer - Copyrighted

Colouring completed, it was brushes out and with just water go back over the coloured pattern to complete the final work of art.
I am enthused and can see endless possibilities for this exercise, just not the first letters of plants but names, etc. still using the beautiful colour schemes that nature affords us.

More examples of the class' work can be found on Gemma Black's blog http://canberragem.blogspot.com.au/