Quick, expressive watercolor paintings from life can be a lot more approachable than you think using a great form-building technique called direct painting. What IS direct painting? In this class we’re going to skip the drawing, and dive straight in paint-first to create watercolors that use brushstrokes to capture the form and energy of your subject.

Direct painting will allow you to get painting faster and encourage you to paint form first, focusing less on outlines and more on volume. This manner of painting will help keep proportions and perspective in check while focusing on the spatial relationships of your chosen subject, versus outlining every object. It’s also a great vehicle to learn how to suggest details and create unique artistic representations instead of carbon copies of your scene.

Since brushwork is a huge tool in creating a lively painting, we’ll start with playing with various brush types and then recreate shapes and textures, to begin building a catalog of techniques you’ll have at your disposal for a quick capture.

We’ll review subjects and setup, learning how to focus, make a plan, and be adaptable to set yourself up physically and mentally for an enjoyable and efficient direct painting session from life.

We’ll then cover my favorite three ways to approach a direct painting, including:

Choosing a focus

Working big to little

Layering

We’ll wrap up by evaluating our painting session and noticing what worked and what challenged you throughout the process. Learn how to make note of experiments that you want to improve between sessions or catalog favorite techniques to try again.

The class project for this class will be working on the various brush drills and completing the painting exercises using objects in front of you. By the end of the class you’ll not only have the knowledge to start adapting direct painting to various life-painting scenarios, but will also add 3 direct paintings to your portfolio. Share them to the Project Gallery along the way or all at the end!

This class is perfect for you if find yourself:

Getting so wrapped up in drawing the perfect initial sketch, you don’t get to painting before you have to pack up.

Not knowing how to start with paint first, so you sit staring at an empty page.

Unsure of how to use your brush to lead your painting.

Basically using your brush to “draw” your subject and your painting lacks energy.

Not knowing what to change to improve any of these frustrations!

If any of these sound familiar and you’re ready to improve your painting practice with direct painting, I’ll see you in the first lesson!

Music Credit: Checkmate by Nathan Moore