Women study art of watercolor

With a name like Ginger Rose and a passion for painting, it's appropriate she would lead the ladies through Friday's "Painting Watercolor Roses for Valentine's Day" workshop at the Brewery Arts Center.

"I love to share what I learn," she said. "Sharing and encouraging probably would be the key to my teaching."

Rose, the center's only watercolor instructor, has been painting since childhood.

"She's a very talented lady," said Loretta Maze of Carson City, one of the students in Friday's class. "Her scrap paper has a rose on it that's to die for."

The use of water, masking liquid and evaporation all make watercolor painting tricky.

"It's a really tough medium," said Debbie Young, a painter off-and-on for 12 years who painted sunflowers in Italy in October.

"The people I went with were very serious watercolorists --EI just wanted to eat and drink my way across Italy," she laughed.

During Friday's workshop, Rose gave each student a single, brilliant red rose petal with a thin stripe of white up its center. She asked them to feel the satin texture of the fragile petal between their fingers.

"In your mind you realize you have to be delicate," she said.

After exercises of the basics, such as first drawing with hard-lead pencils, then layering paint from light to dark colors, Rose taught more advanced techniques like painting a water droplet on a leaf or petal.

"It has to do with cast shadow," she said. "Even drops of water cast shadow."

Rose emphasized the play of light and dark while drawing and then painting the egg-shaped droplets. Students watched pigment flow through tiny canyons in the cold-press water color paper after paint was added to a wet spot.

"I can see water droplets are going to take some practice," said Young.

"Yeah, mine don't look like water droplets at all," laughed Karen Graunke who was painting with watercolor for the first time. She said she was afraid her rose might turn out looking like ragweed.

Even Rose admits it's not easy. She says she's still amazed by how real the droplets look when she paints them.

"Watercolor continually amazes me every time I do it," she said.

Rose will be teaching a class at Western Nevada Community College starting Feb. 20.

Another class with a Valentine's Day theme offered by the center is the microwave dough art workshop taught by Carol Foldvary-Anderson on Thursday. For more information, call the center at 883-1976.

IF YOU GO

Call the Brewery Arts Center for class information at 883-1976.