Nature and Neutrals: Watercolor Theory with Shasta Garcia

Get familiar with a limited color palette to create the colors that show up in nature. All activities use a beginner friendly approach, utilizing tools to visualize color relationships.

Start by getting familiar with a range of blues by creating a watercolor cyano-skymeter. Shasta’s spin on the cyanometer concept for measuring the blueness of the sky. This can help when selecting the blue in your palette to mimic the blue you’re wanting to paint.

In foggy San Francisco the grayness of the sky is a familiar sight as well. Use those same blues to create grays (and even black) without using any black pigment. This can be essential for creating varied contrasts and depth when painting way more than the sky.

Those same blues will then complete the nature triad to mix and evaluate natural greens. You’ll walk away with a system to continue to mix the infinite world of green.

Workshop takeaways

• Picking blue and other pigments for a limited color palette
• Mixing grays and greens
• Understanding basic properties of watercolor as a medium
• Understanding basics of how pigments interact in watercolor
• Transferable color concepts that apply to mediums, like gouache, acrylic, oil, or ink

Materials

Watercolor and tools provided for use in the class. There will be take home materials to continue exploration on your own. Option to purchase ceramic palettes available at the workshop.

Related class

This class is an extension of Watercolor theory and limited palette basics but it’s not necessary to have taken that workshop to attend. There will be some overlap in technique but the concepts will be different and still useful in whatever your level of color theory knowledge. Get a discount on both classes by purchasing the color theory workshop bundle! (Please purchase the bundle on the event listing for Watercolor theory and limited basics with Shasta Garcia).

Skill level

Beginner

About Shasta:

Shasta Garcia is a multidisciplinary designer and artist living and working in San Francisco. She’s completed 10 One Hundred Day Projects which helped develop a consistent art practice exploring various mediums, including calligraphy, watercolor, and ceramics. Inspired by travel art retreats she now also uses sketching and watercolor as tools to capture memories of local outings. This inspired her to create a line of ceramic watercolor palettes including travel sets.

Host or Publisher ARCH Art Supplies