Workshop with Lian Quan Zhen

This weekend I'm attending a workshop with Lian Quan Zhen.  After day one, I think he is a magician with watercolours.

Before painting anything, he has us prepare three small containers of paint: hansa yellow, antwerp blue and perylene red.

He works on setting the foundation one section of the painting at a time. First he uses his spray bottle and gives the area (working top to bottom) he will work on three squirts. He then loads his brush and shakes or taps dots of a color where he wants it. Then he does the same with another color. Each color has a brush dedicated to that color.  To mix the colours, there are 4 options: he either uses the spray bottle to mix the colours, uses his fingers to mix, uses a straw to move the paint or rarely uses his paint brush. Regardless of the option to mix the colours on the paper, he never goes in more than three times, e.g. three squirts with bottle.  By magic the colours mix and shapes start appearing.  

When the colours had been applied on all the paper it was time to add some darks. He often repeated that the dark had to have the consistency of clam chowder.  The dark, consisted of the blue and a touch of red, was flicked that into strategic areas.

For this workshop, he was painting a beautiful landscape with trees and rocks.

Once the paint has dried, he went it to apply some details.   A lot more details will be worked on tomorrow and I'll have more for my next post. Even with details, the limited number of brushstrokes he uses is quite impressive.

Throughout the day, he constantly repeated 'Paint what you want to see'.  This phrase has been etched in my mind.

I'm looking forward to seeing the continuation of the workshop tomorrow.

Here are a few of Lian Quan Zhen's paintings.

Have a great week,
Danielle