watercoloring

One of the best opportunities I could ever ask for while I'm studying here in Italy is the chance to study art with a local artist. Every Tuesday, I go with three other students to the private home and studio of an older man who teaches us how to watercolor. He is really nice and funny, and he teaches us Italian as we teach him new words in English, and every time his wife bakes us delicious crostata (a type of fruit filled tart). And, he helps us learn to paint (though often it ends up he paints half of our pictures for us).


I've never watercolored before (well, once in eighth grade, but that's not saying much). Before the class started, they held a watercolor workshop at the center, so I went. My painting wasn't bad, but not really good either... it looks like a paint by numbers. But anyway, I do think I've improved (hopefully), so here are my pieces so far (plus, how much I actually contributed to the piece):


this is the first one, the "paint-by-numbers" flowers (not actually, but that's what it looks like to me); 100% mine... though maybe not the thing to admit.
This is the first piece I did with the artist. So far, all of our painting subjects have been simply copying some of his paintings, but his oil paintings - not watercolors, so we do kind of have to interpret how to transition from an oil painting to a watercolor painting. It seems like a good way to learn techniques right now. This is a picture of snow-covered stables. (I did probably about 40-50% of this piece.)
The next week, I did a picture of a scarecrow. Maybe 70% was actually mine.
We had time to do a second painting that day, so he picked out a painting of a tower nearby. It was a lot harder than I thought, so probably only about 40% of this is mine.
The latest piece, I'm really proud of (the photograph of the picture kind of drained out the green in the painting, but oh well... maybe I can borrow a better camera, but for now this will have to do). I probably did around 90% of this painting of a tuscan home, and when he saw it, he told me "molto bene!" which means very good. The class had only been hearing "va bene" so far, which means it's okay, so that was really nice. And he only had a few corrections to help improve it. Another girl and I joked that our goal is to have a piece that is 100% ours by the end of the course, no additions from him needed. I really enjoy this class and cherish this truly once-in-a-lifetime experience I am getting. I can't wait to learn more.