In recent watercolor classes I have been introducing my students to the work of Mads Stage, the twentieth century Danish watercolorist and illustrator with a distinctive approach to painting nature: birds and animals in a minimalist style, in which his use of negative space demonstrates that less is definitely more. Frequently his paintings do not depict the entire animal in watercolor although simple pencil lines suggest where the animal lies, how its ears twitch and the branch on which it perches or the plants in which it hides.
American Robin - Linda Jones
Using photographic source materials, my students painted foxes, a heron, bluetits, an English robin, a horse and a tiger, while I painted an American robin that had perched on a fallen evergreen tree outside my kitchen window in the recent snowstorms. Examples of the afternoon's work are shown here.
An English Robin, reproduced by kind permission of the artist, Bobbie George
