Day 7 - Returning to Reality

Today we got up for our last sunrise walk in Myrtle Beach for this trip.

At breakfast we ran into some of the artists taking part in the second week of workshops at Springmaid Watermedia Workshops. I hope their week is as great as we had.

Here are a few assorted sketches I did at points during this trip. There wasn't time for sketching during the workshop days.

I did get to sketch my sister, Mickey, in bed at the hotel on the trip down when we stopped in Emporia, Virginia.

On the last day of the class while everyone was finishing up or packing up I did a pencil sketch of Ted from two different positions and Caroline finishing her painting.

We are in Fredericksburg, VA on our way home and we will be returning to reality tomorrow.

Stained Paper Collage - Day 2

Our second day in Jerry Brommer's class had us working on florals without making a flower...just shapes. The goal was to use the collage papers to give the impression of a floral, varying the size of the pieces and having more detail and smaller pieces near the COI as with the abstracts.

I started with an 11 x 11 square. 

This is also 11 x 11.

This collage is 11 x 15.

We were playing around with different mats to crop and find a smaller piece that makes a small painting. I cropped the painting above this way. I like this...what about you?

It is always amazing to me to see the variety of different pieces created by students in the same class. We are lucky because we only have 10 students in the class. Most of the classes here average about 22 - 24 students.

Today was not nice weather-wise. It was drizzling this morning so we didn't walk on the beach. I did take a photo from the balcony before we went downstairs for breakfast. That is the Springmaid Pier you can see in the photo. I am hoping the rain will be gone by tomorrow, but that isn't the forecast.

Judy Morris Workshop - Day 2

Here is the beginning of the first painting I am working on in class. The reference was a photo I took in Chinatown a few years ago. I did the street sign above the lanterns, but I wanted to add the word "Chinatown" across the bottom. I went on the computer to look at fonts and Chinese words. The problem was that I couldn't enlarge the pattern for the words without a copier that enlarges...which we didn't have in the class. I ended up freehand drawing the words on tissue paper and using a light box to copy it onto my paper. Then I painted it with white latex paint that Judy had which is colored the exact color of Arches paper. When you paint over it some of the color remains on the latex outline and you get a subtle lighter color where the letters are.

Our lesson for the day was on texture and pattern which Judy calls "eye entertainment." The texture and pattern draw you in and make you take a closer look. She uses stencils and patterns to trace and paint through. She brought along several for us to share.

We discussed color chords. Two of the more popular ones are the desert triad which consists of indian red, cerulean, and yellow ochre. The other is the transparent triad which contains quinacridone gold, permanent alizarin, and french ultramarine. Both of these are nice but I wanted something a bit brighter. I used winsor red, permanent alizarin crimson, burnt sienna, and french ultramarine.

I also sketched out a second painting based on a photo I took from the apartment we rented in Paris. I wanted to use words as texture, but I wanted them to have meaning to the painting. So I headed to the computer to print out a few phrases. Here is the sketch of this second painting. I believe it says "a beautiful morning in Paris, hello.

Judy also did a demonstration on applying gold leaf to paintings. This is her latest addition to her watercolors and it has a wonderful effect.

It was a very busy day. Class was from 9 am to 4 pm. Then we went for a swim in the indoor pool, showered, went to dinner, then a presentation, and back to the studio until 10pm.