Finally, a chance to reconnect to the wonderful QE cruise Sept 8 to 25th.

SEPT 9, FIRST day began with approx 20 students in the morning, 5 in the afternoon. The Water was very rough and several students found it difficult to remain in the class. We worked on a few samples of color washes to get everyone trying their colours out. I attempted to get everyone to make a colour chart of the paints in their kits as it was so much easier to know where the pans of the particular colour were kept. We completed a Watercolor of the last departure of the QE2 under a night sky of fireworks.

Starting with the sky we applied a light yellow lemon wash leaving bits of white. We then dropped in colours of cadmium red, Viridian and blue to highlight where the fireworks were going off. Then we let that dry. Keeping the boat unpainted we worked in a dark wash after dropping in some reflective color from the lights on the shore and the fireworks .

Everyone kept adding color until the final level of dark grey in the water. We then added a little Chinese white to pop out the fireworks on the upper left quadrant of the painting. We also worked on the hull of the ship and added some white and grey shadows. I tried to make the darkest sky value around the upper part of the ship and going up into the right quadrant. Then using a mixture of intense blue, burnt umber and alizarin Crimson - trying to get almost a black to add in the vessels floating near the Queen Elizabeth 2.

I took this example from the picture displayed on the QE2 mile in Southampton to begin the journey with something reminiscent on the 50th anniversary voyage. Most students did not get the picture completed as we were using 1/4 sheets of Watercolour paper. However, during the following sea days, the students would bring their unfinished pieces to work on in between other projects.Everyone had transfers and could take one away if they wished.

Our first port of call was Cadiz Spain. We worked on a flamenco dancer in the afternoon. In this class, with the transfers, we copied or free hand drew. I provided artist carbon paper to assist in drawing the picture on the Watercolor paper. In the first stage, I had everyone paint a very light wet wash of ultramarine blue, yellow ochre and alizarin Crimson as a background wash. We left the dancer white. The idea being to add in splashes of very light washes in a diagonal fashion that would build up a varied background. Cadmium Red was the color we used for the dancer. We began with a dry wash on the bodice and followed around the layers of ruffles, leaving some white in various parts of the ruffles. We worked on finding some shadow in the folds of the dress and in the bodice of the dress. We let the Watercolour dry and worked on the face, arms and hair. The hair was a mix of the same three colours as the previous day to try and get a near black. Added in as well was a red flower in her hair. We mixed alizarin and yellow ochre in a very light wash to get the skin colours. We added a little darker colour for the shadows under the neck and under the front arm as well as the upper area of the right arm. We then went back to the lower dress and added spatter of cadmium red to give the dress movement.