VAC offers experimental watercolors workshop

Imagine glass being shattered.

The random shapes and patterns are totally unpredictable.

Now, take these haphazard glass pieces and marry them with watercolors, then add your own playful attitude. Like music on paper, colors flow in delicate waves.

Join Big Island artist Patti Pease Johnson for the Experimental Watercolors workshop from noon-3:30 p.m. March 7 at Volcano Art Center.

Each student will create three to five separate 8-by-8-inch watercolor paintings on hot press paper using prebroken glass as a catalyst to spark creativity. Students also will be taught theories of good composition, along with color theory and color wheel use. Abstract qualities are the focus in this workshop using three or four paints right out of the tube with the glass. After the first drying and glass removal, each piece is brought to further expressiveness by using detailed watercolor techniques of washes, spatters, lifting, value gradations, dry brush and more.

“You can’t help but wonder what is going to happen after your first piece of glass is put on watercolor paper,” Johnson said when asked to describe the experience. “In painting, the more chances you take, the more you will stretch the limits of your understanding, and in turn the more you will grow as an artist.”

Johnson also will offer Soft Pastel Still Life on March 14, and she is presenting a one-woman show with 30 new pieces titled “From the Summons of Art” at the Volcano Art Center Gallery through March 22. It involves a multimedia excursion of intuitive responses in silk, clay, pastel and watercolor, plus challenges possible combinations.

Cost for the watercolors workshop is $60 or $54 for VAC members, plus a $10 supply fee per person. Beginner and intermediate artists are welcome.

For more information or to register, call VAC at (808) 967-8222 or visit www.volcanoartcenter.org.