Gloria Perkins Workshop

I enjoyed very much painting again with Gloria, she has such a loosey-goosey style that is hard to match stroke for stroke because she goes fast to leave us with less chance to muddle around after we lay the paint in. We worked 3 days and came home with 3 framed paintings. I especially love the way she brings frames so we can frame our little jewels. Here they are, I am going to post all three of them instead of doing it a day at a time.

There was a woman sitting next to me that taught painting to students in an art league in her home town. She helped me a lot of times when I did not understand how to do something. Sometimes you think you know how to do something and realize that huh? Why won't mine do that? Lucky me, I had someone right next to me that could show me how to do it...not that Gloria would not show me, but it was nice to have someone right next to you that could show you.

The Valley Farm

We did a study of the Valley Farm by John Constable. This one is 22x28 inches and took us 2 days to paint. Bill Bayer did the instruction on this. It was fun to do. I had to chop off some of it to make it straight and not show the frame, but most of it is there. I want to paint this one again and see if i can do it by myself.

We got a booklet to do this with all the paints, mixes, underpaintings at different stages and the final picture. Because of copyright laws Bill could not show the original, so in essense, we had a study of a study?

Trip to Nashville

I went to Nashville, TN to paint for six days and had a lot of fun. I came home with 5 paintings all of which I will post. I went to paint with the group of painter (teachers) that Johnnie Lilliedahl gets together for an annual national atelier. We work in the old masters method of limited palette, transparent underpainting and an opaque overpainting at the end.

I loved doing the landscapes the best they were a lot of fun and easier for me to do. They were taught by Bill Bayer from St. Louis, MI. Bill is quite funny and hauntingly honest about his life. If you have a chance to lookI am including his link http://www.billbayerart.com/

We worked with John Constables images and did studies of his techniques. Here is my painting.

Lisa Gloria Workshop Day 2

I finished my painting but since taking the photo, discovered an error in painting the spoon which I will fix. Sometimes you are concentrating so hard on painting, you literally cannot see the forest for the trees! But, I am gonna post the finished painting after correcting the spoon. I will probably have some corrections to make when Lisa gives me feedback as well.

She gave me feedback on the first day which told me to soften my edges and darken the apple flesh. I am not sure I accomplished these items. She did say that I did a good job with the color underpainting and keeping the layers thin enough. The size is a 6x8 in canvas on a panel. I love painting on panels. You have that board that is stiff behind your canvan and for me it is easier to control the paint.

Lisa Gloria Workshop Online

Today from 11-2pm I took an online workshop with Lisa Gloria. She used USTREAM with some sort of camera setup to do live streaming video...fabulous idea! She sent a color high resolution photo of the still life we would paint and a transparency of the contour drawing to check your own drawing, but alas, I drew mine on by tracing the transparency instead of using a good lesson in drawing...but, I can paint this again on my own. We also get a dvd of the painting sessions...I have been following her blog for a while and found her Art Studio Secrets to be very interesting as well as informative. http://artstudiosecrets.com/

Those of you interested in art will find many useful tips in her blog and she is an interesting source of art news, esoterica, facts, fiction, etc.

Today we did the underpainting with raw umber to pick out our darkest darks and lightest lights and those in between. We did the color underpainting and hopefully if things dry enough, we can do the color overpainting tomorrow. Here is what I did today.