Lisa Gloria Workshop

This is day one on the still life workshop. Most of the time spent was to do the drawing, paint mixing and underpainting from the hi-res photo emailed after paying the modest $45 fee for a 2 day workshop over the internet. I am a pretty fast painter but had a harder time with the color mixing stage. I think that I got my colors too dark because I was trying to keep up.

We did have a break at which time I got a call from my husband who was playing table tennis. He was in the emergency room after getting hit with a ball flying at him over 100mph! His playing partner took him and he thought the injury was not so severe. I worried about him for the rest of the workshop, which made me want to hurry through to get finished. We did go to an Opthamologist after he got home to have him checked out. He will be ok but he has a severe subconjunctival hemmorhage which makes him look pretty spooky. Today he does not feel too good but he went to the University to make up an exam for his students.

The good thing about Lisa Gloria's workshops is that you can go back to them to catch up, remix paints, etc. because the workshops are recorded and you can go back. I think she said they were also downloadable to your computer. Not sure about that though. Here is her website: http://artstudiosecrets.com/blog/

Here is the first days work and the photo we are working on. She also offers a critique, here is mine:

Looks good! Drawing is spot on. Transitions are a little harsh but they will be painted over so you can work on it next time. I see what you mean about the edges - Well... if you went softer like I did, went for that out of focus look, you'd see a differnet kind of paint emerge at the end. You'd get to pick and choose what parts were in focus or not, how detailed something was. It would look a little more "real" than something that was uniformly detailed because our regular experience, unlike photographs, picks out only a few things to really look at.
This is a great first day, looks like day 2 is going to be really good!

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.

Red Plums

The red plums are my first subject of painting a still life, and can I see my drawing errors, yes, pics posted side by side, so I will refine and do a set up of the fruit and paint them on a 4x6 cotton panel. I will post my progress as I go along. My goodness, I thought I was seeing them better than that...

One problem I keep encountering with my drawings is that the tooth of the paper keeps filling up with graphite and clumping. It is hard to get my darks in without resorting to embossing and I am unsure if I should do that.

I have painting with Cheeko tomorrow and will take one plum to her to see if my idea of using Diox. purple, alizarin crimson and indian yellow for the fruit is on the right track...cannot wait to get started...

Those light lines you will see in most of my drawings are sight lines that I use on a viewfinder to help me get the drawing on the paper better...did it work?