Year of the Fire Horse Workshop – Syllabus 

NOTE: Finish at home or create as many as you like until your are satisfied with your results.

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Blooming involves dropping clean water or a lighter paint mixture into a drying, darker, and more concentrated wash, causing the pigment to be pushed away and creating feather-edged, blossom-like patterns. It is a "happy accident" commonly used to create texture in landscapes, flowers, or snow.

Charging is a wet-on-wet watercolor technique where fresh, concentrated paint is dropped into a previously applied, still-wet wash, allowing the colors to mingle and blend on the paper rather than the palette. It is used to create soft edges, vibrant gradients, and spontaneous, textured effects while maintaining luminous, non-muddy colors. 

Dry Brush is using a brush with very little water and high pigment concentration on dry paper to create rough, scratchy textures.

Glazing is laying transparent, thin, dry layers of paint over dried previous layers to deepen color or change hue.

Gradient is a wash that creates a smooth transition from dark to light (or between colors) by gradually adding more water and less pigment with each descending, horizontal stroke. Key techniques include tilting the paper, keeping a consistent wet "bead" of paint, and using a large, loaded brush to prevent streaky lines.

Granulating paints that contain large or heavy pigment particles that fail to blend smoothly, instead settling into the crevices of paper to create a textured, mottled, or speckled effect.

Lifting is the technique of removing wet or dry paint from paper to lighten a value, soften edges, correct mistakes, or create highlights. It is achieved by absorbing wet paint with a tissue/brush or re-wetting dried paint to gently scrub it away, often creating softer, more organic shapes than masking fluid. 

Sgraffito/Scratch-ing is scratching into wet or dry paint with a palette knife or fingernail creating sharp, fine lines.

An Exacto blade or tooth picks are commonly used.

Wet on Dry is applying wet, paint-loaded brushes onto a completely dried layer of paint, producing crisp, hard-edged, and detailed shapes with intense color saturation. Ideal for adding final details, defined shadows, and foreground elements, usually applied after initial wet-on-wet washes have dried.