Monday, September 24, 2012

first signs of fall


And...my first experience with a  Landscape Painting Workshop! Here is my report following the Stapleton Kearns workshop in Stillwater, Minnesota. It was great! Very intense, lots of instruction at a very fast rate of downloading.  I sketched and scribbled notes as fast as I could while our great teacher rapidly demonstrated his technique, laying in a sketch on canvas with his favorite cobalt violet underpainting. Cobalt violet is now my new favorite too.
Above is a page from my filled up sketchbook. Next is an unfinished landscape from the end of my second day of painting. By this time I had acquired a few new facts about painting in oils; oils are really messy, messier than acrylics, the oil paint never seems to dry or come off your hands; and you can scrape gooey piles of oil right off your canvas if you don't like what you so carefully tried to mix in.                                                                                
 This photo shows several of our group of artists spread out on a hillside working away on the landscape. There was a first hint of fall in the air that day, a brisk breeze, and the sunlight is different from a week before.
Minnesota is lovely and there were some bright fall colors beginning to burst out.


And last here to the left is my painting, not finished, because I couldn't work  fast enough in this new medium. Ooh, tone down the colors, please.
I guess I could say this was the best workshop I have ever attended but it is also the Only workshop I have ever attended. Oils are wonderful, I want to keep my education going in this medium and perhaps I will do this again.