Hobbyista: Watercolor Workshop for Beginners

I am so glad to have learned about Trade School Manila (TSM) from a friend's post on Facebook. For those of you who are not yet familiar with TSM, is a group of people who shares their skills and knowledge in exchange for stuff other than money... it runs on barter. It is modeled after the blueprint of Trade School in New York and you can read more about it here.

On my first visit to Trade School Manila's website, I signed up for two workshops and one of them is Des Feliciano's Watercolor Workshop for Beginners at Commune in Makati. My barter item: this blog post and I hope I do justice with it. :)

Here are the details of the workshop with a little introduction about the teacher (screenshot mtaken from TSM's website):

Actually, I already took a basic watercolor class but that was ages ago. I have already forgotten what I learned and I never really did get to practice it... I am literally back to zero. When I saw the workshop being offered, I thought I'd give watercolor painting another shot.

Now, about the workshop, it was fun and I did learn some new things. I love Des! Her works are beautiful and I love her personality. She's bubbly and I love that she went around during the workshop to talk to all of us... not just to check how we're doing but she also made an effort to get to know her students. She gave us a little background about herself, her achievements and her works. She taught us about the materials that we're going to use, which kind of paper and watercolor brand. The most important parts in the workshop were when she taught us about the different types of brushes and the different watercolor painting techniques. Some of the techniques I'm already familiar with but I honestly didn't know about the brushes. I know there are different kinds of brushes but I only used the very common Japanese (or Chinese) brush that's the easiest to find in bookstores. You know, the one with the bamboo handle. (I don't even know what's it's called. Haha!) Now, thanks to Des, I know about the basic types of brushes that is used for watercolor painting and their specific functions.

Des taught us some basic watercolor techniques using the different brushes. She taught us the wet-in-wet, graded wash, two-tone wash, lifting out, and stippling. (Did I miss anything?) She showed us first how to do each one and then she let us try doing them ourselves. When we were done learning about the techniques, she let us paint a small landscape (or whatever we'd like) using the different brushes and combining all the techniques we learned.

The workshop was really fun and I do recommend it to anyone who wants to learn basic watercolor painting. I do hope Des will teach a different watercolor workshop and I definitely will join again!

Here are some photos from the workshop and below are the links to Trade School Manila's and Des' sites.