WaterColor Artist Tom Hoffmann gave a FREE Watercolor Demonstration last Saturday, April 19, at our Daniel Smith Store in Seattle.
Tom talked about his painting philosophy, his creative process, shared with us some of his watercolor "sketches" from his travels in Mexico and painted a watercolor street scene from one of the sketches. It was especially interesting to listen to Tom talk about watercolor painting because one of his street scene paintings is on the cover of our new Daniel Smith Summer Sale Catalog.
Some of Toms' tips for the attendees were that for him it's about "what not to paint" that painting is a process of editing out everything but the essential visual keys. He later added that he "prefers to leave something for me [the viewer] to add to the piece".
He also described it as kind of like a horizontal "graph" or timeline....
Tom talked about his painting philosophy, his creative process, shared with us some of his watercolor "sketches" from his travels in Mexico and painted a watercolor street scene from one of the sketches. It was especially interesting to listen to Tom talk about watercolor painting because one of his street scene paintings is on the cover of our new Daniel Smith Summer Sale Catalog.
Some of Toms' tips for the attendees were that for him it's about "what not to paint" that painting is a process of editing out everything but the essential visual keys. He later added that he "prefers to leave something for me [the viewer] to add to the piece".
He also described it as kind of like a horizontal "graph" or timeline....
Photo (too much info) <----> An artists balancing ("how little can you do and still tell the story") <----> sketch (too little info)
Tom shared with us how he mixes really rich, "not murky" darks (shadows) in his paintings by mixing Daniel Smith Watercolors in Phalo Blue, Quinacridone Red and Quinacridone Gold. In the new Daniel Smith Summer Sale Catalog on page 3, Tom talks more about this and other watercolor tips that he has found, definitly worth reading!
The audience was very attentive watching the painting come alive under Toms' brush and watercolor, it was really amazing to watch it happen.
A couple of other things Tom said that I noted down because I thought they were interesting and motivational were: "The role of the pencil is to allow me to confidently put the paint down". Darks are the "narrative content, and the forms that are worth looking at". "I like gorgeous paint more than anything else". And lastly, "I want people to say: 'Hell, I can do that!'"
Tom Hoffmann is an instructor atthe Gage Academy of Art and will be offering workshops later this year through Daniel Smith, more information to be posted later. The workshops will be an excellent opportunity to learn from a very good instructor.
1 comment:
it sounds like you were paying really good attention at that demo. i recognize those comments, except the one about the darks being the narrative part. if i said something about "forms worth looking at", what i probably meant was that the dark/light pattern is what we see on the most fundamental level. it's the gestalt of the image, and should therefore be what we hold on to no matter where we go with the image.
who are you, by the way?tom
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