Saturday, July 19, 2008

Plein Air Workshop, Great Day for Everyone!






Lorette joined us from Texas, and we loved having her paint with us. She cut loose with color!
Wendy Woods with her San Juan barn series. She used black gesso, lavender glaze, and opaques last to create this oil painting.
Lisa McHugh's excellent composition of fenceposts leading us to the barn. Barbara's painting looking out across the fields. Though she didn't think it was done, we all liked that she left a big open space in the foreground. What to do with all that grass????????
The fourth image is today's demonstration painting from our beautiful day at Sarah Robert's family farm overlooking San Juan Valley. 15 of us spread out around the farm and each of us found an intriguing view point. In fact there were painting possibilities everywhere we looked. We talked about getting started with thumbnail sketches and looked at the working sketchbook of long-time San Juan Artist, Elvera Spivey. We looked at some fine examples of plein air painting by unlikely artist not known for his outdoor work, Morandi( the bottle guy). I promoted the idea of working with simple compositions. For the demonstration we gathered under an oak tree, and I showed ways to begin, both with a conte start, and with thinned out paint. I worked starting at the top and far back, working forward with a palette knife. Also showed mixing right on the canvas. Many wonderful paintings were created today, Congratulations to all who participated on our land and sea plein air workshop!
Painting from Sarah Robert's farm sold, proceeds to benefit San Juan Preservation Trust.

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