Sunday workshop, September 21st 2025 - Lost Edges, The Concept.

In this workshop we'll be looking at the notion of 'lost edges', that every detail of your chosen subject does not need to appear in your painting - retaining the enigma of a 'lost edge' which the viewer's mind can then put together.

We'll be using watercolour and some wet-into-wet technique to facilitate the 'lost edge' concept but we'll also have detail in the painting to give form and structure.

Lesson Plan:

·         Half fill your clean, label-free jam jar with water.

·         Place some flowers and stems in the jar.

·         Mix a neutral colour (yellow ochre, raw umber) with some water on your palette/plate.

·         Looking at your jar, paint the shape around your jar. Create the silhouette shape of your jar. Soften the outer edges with clean water (I’ll demonstrate edge softening).

·         Wet the area above your jar where your flowers will exist with clean water.

·         Paint your flowers and stems into this area knowing that the paint will run – it will not sit where you place it! You’re creating the effect of a bunch of flowers.

·         Return to your jam jar. Be aware of the shapes you see above the water-line and below the water-line.

·         Even though many of these shapes seem fairly abstract, really search them out and paint them in. Look for the disconnect as a stem passes through the water-line.

·         Note that there are many shapes which have been left un-painted, the lightest shapes remain the white of the paper. 

·         The seemingly simple centre ‘blob’ of the flower can do much more that just be itself – here it is also describing the edges of some of the petals.

·         As the area above the jar dries with your ‘effective’ flowers, you can begin to paint in some of the flowers again, imposing them over the wet-into-wet that you began with.

·         Look both for shapes of flowers and stems, and, where applicable, for areas and shapes around the flowers and stems. The large yellow flower in my painting exists because I both painted it in and also revealed some of it by painting around the petals. I left plenty of edges ‘lost’ by leaving the wet-into-wet to suggest the flower in places.

·         Try this whole process again knowing what you now know. Take risks. Paint with the ‘what happens if..’ attitude.

Next workshops, October 19^th, November 9^th, December 7^th and January 18^th.