RiverBrink Art Studio hosted its second Portraits in Watercolour course on Saturday, giving NOTL residents a chance to hone their painting skills.
Instructor Peter Malaguti is teaching portraiture and went through various watercolour techniques, such as using water to lift colours off the page, and basic proportion, all of which will be used for students to create a portrait of their own in the final two of six classes.
Nancy Bongard, a member of RiverBrink in Queenston, was one of the students. She said Malaguti is “very generous with his talents.”
“And you can’t say that about most teachers,” she said.
Malaguti spent more than 35 years working in advertising as an illustrator, graphic designer, layout artist, art director and creative director, as well as designing repair and maintenance manuals for the aerospace industry.
“I’m pretty fluent in a variety of painting media and am at the stage wherein I want to share all my knowledge with students who want to absorb it and improve their own paintings,” Malaguti said.
“I want the students to be able to manipulate this medium, watercolour, in a portrait. A lot of students have painted in oils or acrylics and think watercolour is difficult. I want to give them the fundamentals, five basic techniques, which they will use in virtually every watercolour painting they’ll do.”
He said part of the goal is to show students how easy it really is to use watercolour, and to help people discover the “little kid in them” at the same time.
“Now, to be sure, this is a skill and it’ll take practice, as does any skill, but once they ‘get it,’ they’ll realize the fun aspect and will just play. Splash around, make a mess, make mistakes, have fun,” he said.
“I hope I’m distilling a complex process into a simple procedure that eliminates the ‘mystery’ of this medium. And I’m really enjoying teaching.”
Anyone interested in taking the course can find details about upcoming classes by emailing manager@riverbrink.org.