Day 2 Workshop, We head down to the Docks

The picture says it all....a fantastic day! We worked with transparent and opaque paint down at our local shipyard, full of boats and great shapes. Wonderful paintings by all today.

The next image shows Sharon's painting at the early stage with only a gesso drawing covered by a yellow glaze. Later, next image, she was painting with opaques. John created a dynamic composition using the dock and boat shapes, using acrylic, building uplayers of paint with a red underpainting. Last image, a charming rendering of the skiffs on the dock.

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.

Madrona Tree

Amazing trees with red bark. The new undergrowth can be a chartreuse color. Here is a small 12 " x 12" oil plein air of an old Madrona tree. They are very slow growing, dense, and good for smoking salmon.
Palette knife helps stay away from too much detail. Sold, thank you Terry!

Plein Air Painting at Roche Harbor

Evening light out at Roche Harbor. 20" x 28" oil on canvas, plein air of this wonderfully complicated structure, very circus like! Painted by the store looking across to the Bar & Restaurant.

This piece has a graphic look due to an underpainting. I will be demonstrating this during the plein air workshop July 19/20.