So I invested another $13.90 in a Domestika painting course 'Contemporary Still Life with Watercolor' by Elisa Alcalde Castro who is a Chilean artist. I now know that the Spanish for watercolour is acuarela - which is a very pretty word that I like to drop into conversation. The subtitles were mostly fine although the genders were all wrong. Luckily number two son is doing Spanish for his international baccalaureate so he was able to explain the very particular issues with Spanish second person pronouns, or something. I said that after six hours of Elisa I felt basically fluent in Spanish and he said that the Chilean accent is considered mostly laughable by the rest of the Spanish-speaking world, and I should forget it all immediately. So I have.
I enjoyed the course. She uses watercolour very differently to the traditional way - lots of paint thickly from the tube like an acrylic. Forming the still life was interesting though, then drawing it up and painting. Mine is a complete disaster from a number of perspectives but I did it and learned something, and it was fun. I thought about never showing it to the world (because it is very bad) but here it is. I might try another one in the future (perhaps not gin, a tin of cocoa and toothpaste this time, why did I do that?)
I amused myself further by more blatant copying of Anna Lau's floral designs. I've probably taken this as far as I can but the results are pretty, and it is a soothing thing to do while watching Netflix.
Aquarelle came to me out of the blue as I read this so its origins are obvious when you think about it but it is still a very pretty word. I'm just loving the painting results.
ReplyDeleteThese are very pretty! I took Spanish lessons for a while but first I had a Chilean teacher, then a Colombian one and then a Catalan one. It was slightly confusing and I blame them for my not being fluent in Spanish. Oh, and the fact that I was working and never had time to look at their handouts between classes.
ReplyDelete