Last week I went out to Vancouver to participate in a watercolour painting workshop with Alvaro Castagnet (aka the Passionate Painter). The workshop was through Art Escapes Vancouver, which is essentially Jamie, who organizes the workshops at the Granville Island Hotel a few times a year. He is bringing in international level artists for these workshops. The location is fabulous, right on Granville Island. The hotel is great, and quiet. And you get to go out and paint all over.

The photo above is Alvaro using a hair dryer to quickly dry the underpainting he was doing of a scene on Granville Island. He was painting the scene directly above, with the bridge flying over. Challenging to say the least.

I think 'challenging' sums up the workshop altogether. I had seen his work in International Artist magazine, and knew that he did workshops in Europe. By the way, this is one of the best art magazines around. I can't remember how I found out about Art Escapes, but decided to sign up last winter for this workshop. I haven't been painting much with watercolours lately and wanted to get back into that. Also, I haven't really done much with landscape painting and watercolour, other than when I went to France. This is now quite a few years ago, and I was out of practice. Alvaro does urban landscapes and that is what interests me most. Plus his use of intense colour was intriguing. How does he do that? Also, he paints plein air, something I have wanted to do but have been too shy to try. A group would be a good way to start.

So off I went, easel under my arm, suitcase packed with paints and paper. Alvaro's approach is totally different to any previous watercolour painter I have seen. He works with a fairly limited palette. This is a necessity when you paint on site as you can't drag around a massive palette. He showed us how to travel light, yet be able to paint half sheet watercolours. His easel is light and has a handy, small board that holds the water and sponge (something to look into). Because he does instructional videos, we weren't able to take photos of him painting. He did give me permission to take the one of him drying the painting, which I really appreciate. He pointed out that if you spend all your time taking photos, you aren't concentrating on what is happening, which is a very good point. And people aren't jostling all around to get the best shot, which can get very annoying.

Alvaro (ALvaro) is a very physical painter and showed why it is important to stand to paint, and how to literally attack a painting. Boldness, relaxation, confidence. Put your free hand in your pocket. Stand back and look at your scene a lot, then when you paint, just look at the painting. In some ways it seemed like he was painting like one would with oil paints because he would put down big strokes of dark watercolour and then work into them with other colours. He did 2 demonstrations a day and that was really needed to be able to understand how he thought through the process of getting the painting down.

At the end of the day, he would do 'surgery' on our paintings. This was really instructive, showing better composition, better use of darks and lights.

This is my really awful first try at painting outdoors and using this approach to painting. I am putting this up to show that learning is always going on and that you just have to jump in and try it, realizing that you are going to make a lot of messes. It was actually quite a lot of fun to just do a brief sketch and then just start putting paint down. That is a big contrast to how I have worked with watercolour in the past. This way of painting uses mostly semitransparent and opaque paints as opposed to the transparents I am used to. I really need to know how to do figures. This one looks stunned.

Believe it or not, this is the same painting after surgery, done in less than 10 minutes. I really like the figures, and Alvaro gave us a session on how to do them because so many of us struggled with it. Now I am going to practice this a lot. First you start with a dark squiggle.... Also, I learned about two new colours, neutral tint and chinese white. I didn't have either one, nor have I used them. Neutral tint is great, it is transparent and takes any colour and makes it darker and more intense. The white, you can see how it was used above to highlight the car windows. It is really useful for urban landscape painting, for windows, and steam etc. Something else to experiment with.

Another lesson I learned was about seeing the landscape. I knew about the idea of squinting to just see the shapes, particularly the darks and lights, when you are looking for a composition. Alvaro suggested letting your eyes go out of focus, and then you see the colour blocks. This is really helpful to understand where you do and don't want detail. I walked back from the market to the hotel one afternoon doing this and all of a sudden it clicked into place and I could see the composition like a painting. Another skill to practice.

One other aspect involves the first photo, with the hair dryer. Being able to do an underpainting while outdoors is tricky, because it takes time to dry. And painting on location, you want to paint fairly quickly to capture the light of the moment. It changes incredibly fast when you are in the city, particularly right downtown among the skyscrapers. Alvaro painted right on the corner of Burrard and Georgia. In several places he found electrical outlets, like the one in the garden in the above photo. You just have to look around and they are there. Sometimes though, you have to forego the underpainting and just go for it.

There was a lot to learn and absorb. We even did our final painting right on the waterfront at Granville Island, with all the tourists hovering over us, taking photos. And it was fun. Now that I am home, I plan to get practicing. I did get one of the videos (the one of Paris) to help reinforce the learning. I'll show you my practice people soon. If I practice a lot, maybe I can go back to Paris and paint along the Seine.

So, great workshop, great location, great experience. Thanks Alvaro and Jamie.