LJ and NJ

During the past week i worked on rocks at home.  Today had class and teacher was willing to leave the rocks alone, and begin work on the waves.  (I’ll go back to the rocks on my own, but not today.) So first I tried to outline major large shapes in the water.  Then teacher wanted me to make lots of “worms” — squiggly shapes that would kind of follow the larger shapes that i had outlined.  Most of the lesson was focus on brush stroke.  I am used to holding the brush at about a 45 degree angle from the canvas.  Sometimes, as with painting clouds, i use an even more acute angle.  But today i was told for painting this water, hold the brush at a 90 degree angle from the canvas, and, using the long brush, stand back from the canvas.  This of course gave me even less control than usual.  Also, was to focus on continuously changing the degree of pressure on the brush.  The messy big wave in the middle is a result of me trying to demonstrate to teacher how i might do this on my own, without the “worms”.  Really bad idea — what you can see at this point is my beginning efforts to correct this error.  Live and learn!