Online Class: Getting Started with Watercolor Pencil Techniques

In this class, learn about the amazing possibilities of watercolor pencils and why they are a unique medium for color sketching and combining with watercolor paints.

Through interactive demos and instructions, teaching artist Sudeshna Sengupta will guide participants through the essential techniques for color mixing and tonal blending using lines, strokes, hatching, cross-hatching, and stippling, and will also explain how to apply varied density and pressure with watercolor pencils. Participants will then apply these techniques to create a mini color drawing of a botanical subject. 

Reference photos will be provided in advance for the in-class project, but participants are welcome to use photos, printouts, houseplants, fruits, vegetables, or other simple household objects of their own to draw from.

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This class is suitable for youth ages 12 and up. Children are welcome to participate alongside their adults.

This program will take place via the video conferencing app – ZOOM. Details for accessing the Zoom meeting will be with your receipt upon registering and again sent via email the day prior. Please register in advance in order to access the program.

Note that all program times are in Mountain Time.

Supplies needed for this class: 

• A set of Watercolor pencils
• 9” x 12” and 11” x 15” Mixed-media pad or Hot-press or Cold-Press Watercolor block (preferred) or pad (tape-bound, not spiral-bound) of Fluid, Strathmore 400 series (not 300 series), Canson, or any other brand with acid-free 140 lbs (300 gsm) or heavier sheets.
• A regular 2 pencil (a.k.a. HB) or 2B pencil and a white eraser.
• Watercolor brushes (synthetic ‘Taklon’ brushes work well): 3 to 5 Round brushes in the range of Size 6, 8, 10, 12 Optional: a 1 Flat brush that’s 1⁄2” to 1.5” wide. Royal Soft-Grip or Simply Simmons Watercolor. Round brushes work well.
• Q-tips and paper towel or pieces of cotton rag. Cut-up pieces from a clean used t-shirt work well.
• Masking tape if a watercolor pad is used instead of a watercolor block.
• 2 empty glass jars or containers for holding water.
• Optional: An ordinary ¾” – 1” mop brush to be used as a clean-up brush after erasing pencil lines, a white wax crayon or a small piece of candle for optional resist techniques, and watercolor paints for additional washes.

About the Instructor:

Sudeshna Sengupta’s career as a teaching artist spans multiple decades, continents, and cultures that inform her pedagogy for decolonizing studio art. She earned her Master of Fine Arts degree in 1985 from Visva-Bharati University, founded by the first non-European Nobel Laureate (1913) and humanist poet Rabindranath Tagore.

After teaching art and design at the college level in New Delhi, Seattle, and California, she taught at New Mexico State University-Alamogordo, where she established its first intaglio printmaking studio in 1995. Besides the O’Keeffe Museum, Sengupta teaches credit courses with the School of Art & Design of the Santa Fe Community College.

Her etchings and lithographs from the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi have been featured in a landmark exhibition on Women Printmakers of India at the NGMA-New Delhi in India. Her work is in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi; Association Musée d’Art Contemporain, France; Kala Institute, Berkeley, and more.

Sengupta also conducts workshops, short courses, lectures, and community-based art events focusing on multicultural and intercultural experiences that emphasize human, cultural, and environmental connectedness through creativity.

To learn more, please visit notes-and-doodles.com and visit her Instagram @santafe_online_art_studio

Registration

This class is being offered on a sliding scale.

$10 minimal fee.

$20 covers the cost of the class.

$30 covers the cost of the class, plus a contribution to support educational programs.