Watercolour Workshop For Beginners - Bees (Friday Morning)

Watercolour Workshop for Beginners - Bees, Friday the 17th of May 2024, from 10am - 1pm

Art is a great activity to encourage mindfulness, relaxation and of course creativity.

This term we are going to run a series of watercolour workshops for beginners. These workshops can be enjoyed as either stand alone workshops, or you can enjoy the continuity and join each workshop in turn. Together we will enjoy learning to paint with watercolours in a variety of different themes and styles.

During these workshops we will be exploring and experimenting sketching with watercolour pencils and also painting with watercolours.

World Bee Day is celebrated each year on the 20th of May to raise awareness of the importance of bees as pollinators, the threats they face and their contribution to sustainable development.

Slovenia proposed that the UN proclaim the 20th of May as World Bee Day and after three years, the UN member states unanimously approved the proposal and the 20th of May was proclaimed World Bee Day. The date coincides with the birthday of Anton Jansha, a pioneer beekeeper from Slovenia born in 1734.

How do people celebrate World Bee Day ? By setting up a bee hive or native bee hotel in their garden, enjoying breakfast with honey and other hive products or perhaps taking part in art competitions on the topic of beekeeping and pollinators.

How are we going to celebrate World Bee Day ?

We will be having a fun watercolour workshop where we will be drawing and painting bees with watercolour pencils and paints.

You will also need good quality watercolour paper, a set of brushes suitable for watercolour and a jar for water.

Our art tutor Marina will guide you step by step to create your own unique piece of art while learning how bees have been an important part of most cultures and religions since the ancient times across the world !

M aterials required for the workshops

Watercolour pencils are perfect to use because they are adaptable, clean and portable. Though they are similar to normal pencils, it is when you add water that their uniqueness appears. When learning how to use watercolour pencils, we will be experimenting with lots of different techniques on scrap paper and when confident we will be using them on our finished sketches.

We will learn the basic skills and techniques of watercolour pencil sketching, including crosshatching, brushing out colour, brushstrokes, blotting, wet on dry, dry one wet, dry on dry, grading colour, learning how to achieve light and shade. We will also cover the rules of perspective, composition and texture that will help us in finalising our watercolour pieces.

Watercolours have a translucent, light quality and are great to experiment with brushstrokes and details.

The important tools for watercolour painting are a set of watercolour pencils, sketchpad, paints, brushes suitable for watercolour, a pencil sharpener, a jar for water, a palette, a board, watercolour paper, tissues for blotting your brush and a putty eraser. The paints are available in pans and tubes. Tubes can be useful when painting large areas, whereas pans are smaller and easier to transport. It is crucial to have a good quality watercolour paper when doing the final pieces because watercolour paint makes a feature of the paper they are painted on.

We will learn how to hold a brush and experiment with top techniques like highlights using tissue paper, wet-on-wet, achieving a gradient effect, using a dry brush and building up on light and shade, hatching, crosshatching and solid shading.

Though we will learn the basics of sketching and painting with watercolour, most of all we will try to have fun by exploring different watercolour techniques.

W here to purchase your art materials

Depending from your budget, you can either purchase your art materials from the professional art shop Goslings in Sudbury, or you can find more affordable ones in the Works or Poundland.

According to your budget you can purchase your art materials from the professional art shop Goslings in Sudbury, or more affordable ones, including sets of watercolour pencils, paints, watercolour paper and sketchbooks can be found in The Works, Poundland, the local supermarkets, and of course from online retailers.

Please note we run all our courses based on a minimum number of participants.

If you are no longer able to attend the class please contact the team at your earliest convenience. Cancellations received within 48 hours of the class start time are non-refundable.

If any of the courses you wish to attend are full or you cannot make the date, please let us know so that we can register your interest and let you know of future opportunities or add your name to a reserve list. You can contact the team on sudbury@easterneducationgroup.ac.uk or telephone 01787 880619.