DAY 3 PORTLAND WORKSHOP SLIDE SHOW!!!

I had a nice visit from  a blogger friend,   Gary Everest , on Friday.  It is one of the great things about this internet world...an opportunity to make friends you would never meet any other way.  Pen pals with faces and interesting work.  Check out his blog and his work.  This is a very talented individual.  He was immensely flattering.  It's always a surprise to find people think you are famous and intimidating.  I'm just "regular folks".  Stop by if you are in my neighborhood and say "hi".  I would love to meet you, too!   

GUALALA WORKSHOP FINAL DAY "HEAD & HANDS" DEMO AND SLIDE SHOW

Knowing how to draw and paint hands is critical when painting portraits.  Otherwise you are severely limited in your options.  The last day of the workshop we focus on ways to approach drawing hands and incorporating them into a painting.  This was my demo.  I decided to collage over tyvek since I had never done that before and wanted to see how it would behave.  This was the result.  The slide show is the student work for the day.  Great job!!

We had a wonderful week here in Gualala.  I hope I have the opportunity to come back again to teach.  This is a fabulous community and a charming place to spend some time.  Just south of Point Arena on the Pacific Coast amongst the Redwoods with the Pacific Ocean lapping at the shore.  Ah Paradise!

SELF PORTRAITS STUDENT SLIDE SHOW!

Today we worked on creating self portraits by looking in the mirror as opposed to working from a photograph.  I was impressed with the quality and output today.  This is a fun group of people to work with.  Tonight most of us went out for dinner and great conversation.  Tomorrow is the last day.  I will be sad to say goodbye to everyone.  Hopefully I will be back for another workshop.

DEMO AND SLIDE SHOW FOR EXPRESSIONS! DAY 3 GUALALA WORKSHOP

Today everyone did a bozzetto sheet with various expressions of the same face.  I have a wonderful series of photos I took of Preston Metcalf, the assistant curator of the Triton Museum in Santa Clara, Ca.  He has a wonderfully expressive face and was generous in letting me use these photos however I saw fit.  I like to use them for this exercise because the expressions are genuine, not an actor posing.  I decided to do a sheet based on a children's book, Sesame Street Opposites featuring Zero Mostel mugging his way through the book.  Talk about over acting!!  I also thought it would be instructive to demonstrate adding some collage elements.  This piece doesn't photograph true to how it actually looks.  Another fun day with lots of great student work!

DAY 2 ADVANCED WATERCOLOR PORTRAIT WORKSHOP GUALALA

This is the demo I did for today's demo.  The idea is to change the lighting on the face you are painting.  It takes quite a bit of concentration to translate the light pattern you see on another image and transfer it to the one you have.  The following slide show is the result of lots of great work today.  Everyone grasped the concept and ran with it!

GUALALA WORKSHOP DAY 1 DEMO & SLIDE SHOW

I have a small but enthusiastic group here in beautiful Gualala, California.  The Advanced Watercolor Portrait workshop is at the Gualala Art Center.  I will take some photos of the grounds and building and post later in the week.  It is a stunning venue.  Day one deals with the opportunity to explore various color ideas.  I have everyone work on a half sheet divided into 5 x 7 segments.  As you can see by the slide show, everyone really had fun with this concept.  I wish my photography was as good as their efforts!  I must do a better job of photographing tomorrow.

At the end of the day, my husband and I sipped wine, sitting in comfy chairs outside watching the sun setting into the Pacific Ocean.  A perfect ending to a wonderful day.

LA CROSSE WORKSHOP SLIDE SHOW #2

Here are the rest of the paintings I photographed days 3 and 4 from the workshop.  Day five I shared lots of ways to make stamps and create texture.   Everyone spent the rest of the time focusing on making samples for future reference.  Friday is always a challenging day for workshops.  Many need to pack up and get a head start on the weekend.

CWA WORKSHOP SLIDE SHOW!

This was a wonderful group to work with.  Everyone worked hard and produced some great images.  I was particularly pleased with their success at drawing accurate features in all 3 poses.  Some of the paintings are still in progress but I wanted to share all the work for the week.  Tomorrow I will post my final demo.  I hope you enjoy the slide show.  Don't forget to click on the "x" in the upper right hand corner to get rid of that annoying stupid pet ad.  It's the price of having free slide show service.

BROMMER WORKSHOP DAY 5 : FRAMED!

Day 5 is almost always shorter than the rest of the days.  We were only going to create one painting.  The last design format he talked about was "Shapes within Shapes".  Basically, the idea is to put a border or frame like structure around the painting which serves to contain and organize what is inside.  Often if the painting is busy and feels chaotic, this device makes it work.  The border doesn't have to be continuous.  Sometimes it is more implied.  He showed lots of different examples.  Here is my version and the sample painting  Jerry painted while we worked.  Everyone was very intense in working during this workshop.  Often we kept working through part of the lunch break because and there was very little talking.  We were really "into it!

Jerry spent more time lecturing in the morning than usual, and since he had just juried the awards for the International Society of Acrylic Painters, he talked about the jurying process and some insights about how he selects the winners.  He said the awards reflect only how the juror feels at that moment.  If he juried the show a day later he might pick differently.  Ultimately, he looks for paintings he would like to take home, the ones that touch him in someway, the ones with "content".  It's not just about technique and design. Ultimately, he feels the purpose and value of these shows is to inform, educate and inspire those who come to see it. The awards are not that significant because they are just how one person feels at one moment in time.  At the end of the day, many of us went over to see the show.  The variety of paintings was impressive.  It was fun to look at the different works and "see" the design construct.  Most of my favorites received awards.  Congratulations to all of the entrants.  You are all winners.

A big thank you to Barbara Leites for all her hard work putting on an excellent workshop.

BROMMER WORKSHOP DAY 4: 8 MORE DESIGN STRATEGIES!

Day four of the workshop focused on quite a few more design strategies.  He discussed 8 additional compositional ideas.  After talking about the concept behind the design, he would show us lots of examples using this format.  There was always a wide range of subject matter and styles which was very helpful to understand how one might use this design for their own work.  Some of the examples were rather subtle and Gerald had marked those with black lines to help us see the division of space.  We were expected to produce two paintings and had the option of picking which design schemes we wanted from those that were discussed.

  Since I am not usually an abstract painter, my first choice was the Opposing Forces composition.  I can invision working this into my paintings more than some of he others.  A real challenge for me is to see how I might utilitze each design idea within my work.  I plan to play around with this idea in my sketch book when I get some breathing room. As you will see in the slide show, this was a very popular format.  I was pleased with the final piece.  I discovered some new textural techniques along the way.  I was working over old paintings.  I like how the original color shows up in very subtle ways.  For my second painting, I decided to do a vertical composition because I noticed that I have a tendency to apply collage papers in a vertical manner.  I was working on varying the width, color, and breaking up the space in an interesting way.  Not so sure about the outcome but I sure was having fun.  Here are the results of the rest of the class having so much fun it should be illegal!

BROMMER CHANNELS DIEBENKORN: WORKSHOP DAY 3

Different compositional strategies are about ways of creating movement in the painting to lead the eye to the focal point.  Day 3 was working with a design concept associated with many of Robert Deibenkorn's painting.  This is a composition that only works well horizontally.  There is a very large space(described as expanded or feeling like it wants to expand) either top or bottom, a band across the opposite end of the painting, for containment and a narrow area (compressed between the two ) which becomes the focal point. I call this design construct "compression".  This is a great design for paintings that feature lots of sky and a very low horizon line if the expansive shape is on the top. I was able to do three, the first being my favorite.  There were many handsome pieces created with this format in the class.  We were working on300 lb watercolor paper cut 11" x 11".   Check out the slide show and find your favorite!

BROMMER WORKSHOP DAY 1: MOVEMENT

If you ever have a chance to take a workshop from Gerald Brommer, you must take advantage of the opportunity.  He keeps things clear, simple and insightful.  I have put together a slide show of all the student work today.  Every one is excellent, interesting and different.  These are the two I created today. The first followed some very specific directions to create movement toward the focal point.  The second we were free to create our own design with the same goal in mind but more individual placement of light and dark shapes.

If you can't make a Brommer workshop, his books are the next best thing.  I have two books on college that he wrote.  Both are favorites of mine.  Watercolor and Collage Workshop has the lessons we are covering this week.  Collage Techniques has other ideas and very clear instructions, as well. (be sure and click on the "x" to get rid of those stupid pet things if it shows up on the slide show.  I have no control over that appearing with the slide show.  They must have paid Slide.com big bucks to stick it on every slide show!)