Shirley Trevena: Breaking the Rules of Watercolour

When you learn to play a new game, or perform a new task, it's natural for the first question to be; What are the rules?

Although they can be helpful at some points in the creative process, watercolor painting rules often do more to dampen inspiration and crush passion than they do to encourage it.

In this art instructional video featuring master watercolor artist Shirley Trevena, students will learn that in most cases, the rules of watercolor painting that have become popular over the years are really made to be broken.

This watercolor painting workshop supplies over an hour of one-on-one instruction time with Trevena, who takes students through the painting process from her first exciting concept all the way to how she knows when it is finished. To demonstrate the liberty of watercolor painting without the rules, Trevena walks workshop participants through a variety of exercises to illustrate different aspects of her creative process, including: use of distortion in perspective, altering size relationships, use of saturated color and bleed-backs, incorporating favorite objects, and more.

You will learn to emulate Trevena's organic process for watercolor painting, allowing each part to grow naturally from its adjacent object. Trevena encourages each student to throw caution to the wind, not force elements that don't belong, and to be willing to listen to the painting as it tells you where it really wants to go.