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.

DISCOVERY!

Although I haven't been painting, I have been busy taking care of office work, entering competitions, matting and framing work and getting ready for teaching my Advanced Watercolor Portrait workshop in Gualala next week.  One of the topics is how to change the lighting on the image.  Ideally, you have a sculpture head that you can light in different ways to see how the light falls on the different features.  There was a small plaster  cast available through the Utrecht catalogue awhile back but I missed the window of opportunity to purchase it.  Now I can't find anything suitable.  I usually just keep a clip file of interesting lighting situations on various heads and work from that.  Tonight I was playing around with Photoshop Elements and discovered a tool called "Smudgestick" under filters/artistic.  I had never bothered with that one before.  Turns out it alters the light pattern on the image!  I have included a photograph of mine.  The top image I reduced the light on the face just slightly.   The bottom image I removed most of the shadow on the face.  

I will be sitting out at the Gallery Concord tomorrow working on my example of various expressions for the workshop.  Stop by and check it out if you find yourself in the neighborhood.

NOSTALGIA!

 I was sitting in the doctor's office reading the September issue of Art and Antiques when I came across this nifty little number!!!  How cool is this! At the turn of the last century, all gentlemen had a walking cane as an elegant accessory.  Some hid a sword, I believe, while others were actually guns. This one was an easel in disguise!  The handle came off and there was a metal tripod that dropped down through the bottom.  I hope you can see the space for the paints and next to that there was a water container.

I wish my dad was still alive.  Of course he would be 107 years old! but he was very clever and I know he could make me one of these.  My youngest son inherited this mechanical inventive gene but he is too busy.  Who do you know who could recreate this concept?  I'm ready to place my order!

PROCESSES!

Rhonda asked how I created several of my latest paintings.  The answer was too long for the comment section so I thought I would answer her questions here.

This last painting started out as a failed image.  I don't throw paper out, I recycle it into an acceptable painting.  With this one, I covered it with hand painted tissue paper collage.  Creative Catalyst Productions has a wonderful DVD instructional by Carrie Burns Brown on how to make these papers.  I then drew with a permanent Sharpie pen my images on white tissue paper that was cut into squares.  Using diluted matte medium (half water, half medium) I collaged the squares down, leaving a border around each square.  When that dried,  I painted the tissue using acrylic inks.  I also used some gold metallic acrylic around each head.

The Bleeding Heart painting started with a simple grid of squares and had a pale wash of various colors painted on the paper .  I then collaged tissue squares which had been stamped with different size heart patterns using white gesso instead of ink or paint.  I made most of my own stamps.  After the tissue collage dried, I painted on top with watercolor sticks from Daniel Smith.

I hope this information triggers some new ideas for you to explore.

UNDECIDED!

I finished this piece and started another.  I wanted to see the lines more varied and less prominent.  I messed up the ink lines on the second piece.  Now I have to figure out what to do to camouflage  the bad drawing.  I have set it aside while I ruminate.  In the meantime, I am doing the exercises in a very old 

Charles Reid book on portraiture.  His style has changed quite a bit over the years.  This portraits in this earlier book seem more impressionistic.  They seem simple! Ha!  Simple is never easy. 

KEEP THE PEN MOVING

Yesterday I took my turn sitting at the Rose Shensen Gallery on the grounds of the Triton Museum.  Santa Clara Valley Watercolor Society  has their annual show up.  I wasn't able to attend the reception and awards ceremony because I was  in La Crosse, Wisconsin.  I would have liked to have been there.  They always have an overflow crowd with great food and lively conversation, not to mention the suspense of finding out if  you won an award.  I was honored to receive second place!  with my painting "Bleeding Heart".  As always, there are some fabulous pieces in the show.  They also have the juror's comments next to the winning pieces.  I wish  more shows would include this kind of information.  In fact, the juror has agreed to come on the pick up day and give a critique for any of the participating artists that would like one. 

The drawings above are one of the pages in my sketchbook that I drew while sitting at the gallery.  It is fun trying to figure out how to fill up the page with multiple faces,