My Watercolor Academy experience

Story and artworks from Stanley A. Urbanik, Watercolor Academy student

About me

I have a degree in Chemical Engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, NJ. and worked for 41 years for Dupont.

Art Experience

Growing up and in grade school always interested in art. Liked to draw airplanes and later cars. Did very well in art projects in school but never received much encouragement at home. In high school became interested in Mechanical Drawing (drafting) and won the "best in school" award two years in mechanical drawing. Learned isometrics and perspective drawing in these classes. As an adult and working never did anything in terms of drawing or painting. After retirement took a class in drawing (graphite) at a "life long learning center". In Florida we have a residence in a gated community with exposure to many retirement type activities. Here we were able to take watercolor classes given by one of the neighbors. Here I enjoyed the experience and guidance for beginning painting. We took these short 8 week classes for 3 winters.

My Watercolor Academy experience so far

I am enrolled in the Drawing Academy and like very much the disciplined approach to art. When the Watercolor Academy was offered I was excited to signup almost immediately.

Since starting this watercolor course, I have viewed the videos through the "washes". I also received Vladimir's "Book on Watercolor". In terms of painting, I am doing the exercises in videos 5 through 13 on color theory because I never had the understanding shown in these videos. I think lesson 8 on Light - Dark contrast was very interesting (I did the exercise twice to try and get it right). Especially interesting is the knowledge that you can use a color's complement up to the point of the complement's saturation for the shading. This provides different options when using this knowledge in a painting. Also I like lesson 10 - complementary contrast because of the different gray's available depending on the complementary pairs used to generate the gray hue.

I have viewed the videos on composition and have started to view the videos on washes.

Regards,
Stan

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