Big brush, small paper

I’ve just finished jotting down three pages of notes from a weekend workshop in Montreal with the great watercolour painter Alvaro Castagnet. I’m sure plenty more will be added to my notebook as I process all that I tried to absorb over the two days.

A short time ago, I was lucky to see a brief Instagram post advertising the studio workshop, and I jumped at the chance to see Alvaro in my very own city. I’m sure it filled up quickly. Over the two days, we didn’t paint much but we were treated to five half-sheet demos. Three urban scenes, one landscape and one interior. That’s a lot of painting to watch, but all of it was fascinating. And after a spring and summer of being the teacher, it was a joy to be a student again. To watch, to listen, to have time to think about what was happening on Alvaro’s palette and the paper.

If you know Alvaro’s work, you probably know that mood and atmosphere are often used to describe it. He uses lots of greys, reds and blacks in his watercolours. And watching him paint is a bit like catching a glimpse of a chef at work in a busy restaurant kitchen. He draws quickly, he moves back and forth as he grabs brushes and mixes colour, he slashes paint across the paper, he shouts for emphasis, he splatters opaque washes on top of darks, and at the very end he seasons with dabs of white. His demos are done in an hour. It’s exhausting to watch, but oh, so entertaining.

And sprinkled into all of that he describes his thought process and doles out buckets of advice. “Don’t draw, PAINT!” “Values and temperature first!” “Paint small but use a BIG brush!” “Make every brushstroke beautiful!”

We were discouraged from taking notes as he painted lest we miss something happening on the palette or the paper. That was fine with me, but that’s also the reason I jotted down my notes today before I forgot something important.

My first day painting was garbage, but on the second day we painted along with him, as he did each step. I tried to pay more attention to my brushstrokes and the lost and found edges in the painting. Here is Alvaro’s demo.

And here is my version of the same NY scene, done in under an hour before we took a break for lunch.

If you ever see that Alvaro is reaching in your city, or if you can attend a travel workshop with him, you won’t regret it. It’s high-level teaching that really gets you thinking about how you paint. I’m so grateful that I had a chance to learn with him.