Recently my friend and fellow illustrator Alice Ratterree mentioned that she had begun a mentorship with the awe inspiring EB Lewis. She was enjoying the one-on-one class so much that I just had to check out what she was talking about. Mr. Lewis offers one-on-one tutoring sessions for a very reasonable fee and I right away snapped up the opportunity to work with a true master of watercolor. My experience with Mr. Lewis has been wonderful, I’m learning new things every week and I can’t wait to see what I learn next! Here’s a little taste of what we’re doing. Mr. Lewis saw my small black and white sketch of a boy and alligator and liked the drawing, he suggested we work on it and take it to a painting.
So, I painted it… and he didn’t really like my painting (that’s one thing I LOVE about Mr. Lewis, he doesn’t just tell me it’s good if it’s not, he tells me why he doesn’t like it and makes me do it over again). His critique, too flat, not enough depth, not looking at good enough resource…
He suggested I go back to the black and white, make some changes and try a fully rendered pencil drawing… so I did…
Then he suggested painting over my pencil, to see what happened. He liked this one better, but his critique was that there was a background and foreground but that there was no middle ground and he felt I was still just “coloring” with my watercolors. Plus the pencil muddied things up too much. As usual he was right.
Try number four, he liked it! Now there’s foreground, middle ground and background and I’m not just coloring with my paints, I’m using them as watercolors should be used!
Yay for EB Lewis and his wonderful mentor program. I’m continuing my work with him and can’t wait to see where I end up!
