Peace Island Hospital Heritage Mural is done, done and done!!! Except for one final piece, so I guess it's not quite done.Finished a few hours before the opening.....with a couple of hours to spare!

New Hospital Mural Design

Working out design ideas for my next mural project for the new hospital here in Friday Harbor. I'll be posting mural panels as they are completed this summer. Here is a scale model of the project, 63 inches which will translate into 63 feet for the finished mural.Lots of painting in my future.....

Painting out on location in the San Juans

Got out on a late spring morning and painted with my friend Dana Nunnelly out at False Bay. There's a great view across to the Olympic Mountains. The weather sits on the straights and the snow capped mountains peak over the top. Low tide at False bay, 7" x 11" Plein air oil.

Mural Panels installed at Roche Harbor

2 big painted panels just went up at Roche Harbor on San Juan Island. Based on historic photos, Here is my interpretation of what the busy harbor might have looked like over 100 years ago. This panel was painted in acrylic with light fast pigments and clear coated, size 5 x 10' Mounted outdoors near the Roche Harbor store.

Summer Workshop Schedule for 2012

Our summer Plein Air painting workshops are a marvelous way to experience the San Juan Islands through the eyes of an artist. Each painting location presents particular challenges and opportunities. We will visit different sites each day, setting up on location and painting. Pastoral views, island vistas, shorelines, gardens, dockside, and homes of islanders offer exciting places to paint. I teach with oils, however artists of any medium are welcome to join.
Friday evenings will start with chats about materials, demonstrations and painting exercises, a good time for discussion of any art questions. Saturday morning we will head out to begin on location, working with the natural color palette. Sunday, we try new techniques, expanding to be more expressionistic, pushing color and simplifying form. Some concepts we will be covering are how to see a painting on location, sketching an idea, simplifying the idea, establishing the color palette, laying in a composition, setting up a good working palette, mixing paint, ways to apply paint and working with new techniques that can lead to letting exciting things happen on the canvases.
Here are the dates for 2012
JULY......... July 13,14,15
AUGUST........August 10,11,12
SEPTEMBER.....Sept 7,8,9
Click here for more info about materials and photos of previous workshops.
Contact Annie at 360 378 2638 to sign up for workshops or anniehowelladams at gmail.com. Cost for the weekend workshop is $225. Registration is now open.

Fantastic Class, 8 weeks of Figure Painting, Long Pose

Here are the results of the final class, Terry Cooter model. Each painting is quite different and impressive for first time figure painters. WE started with composition, laying things in with just one color. the second week, we did a color poster and then worked on adding color. The third and final week, we redrew our paintings and really put on the paint. Great Job by Everyone!!

Painting the Figure, Long Pose, Class

Our winter painting class is off to a GREAT start! We have 2 sessions going, a Thursday night session and a Sunday morning group. Our models are holding the same pose for 2 weeks, giving us an opportunity to develop a painting, but mostly to increase our ability to LOOK. The first week we drew with pencil to get a feel for the pose then we switched into simple painting with burnt umber. By the end of the night we had the figure established on the canvas with the light and dark areas blocked in.
This first look at form made our job the second week a lot easier when we started to apply color. The first thing we did was make corrections by looking at our paintings backwards with a small hand mirror. Next we laid out a simple palette of colors, cad yellow medium, cad red light, french blue, cobalt blue ,burnt umber and white. I would have liked to have had yellow ochre as well but didn't. I started in the shadows, cooling off my flesh tones with a mild mix of cobalt blue into my flesh colors of white, cad yellow and a pinch of cad red light. After I laid in shadow colors, I started to address the flesh colors in light, which was most of this portrait, I had flat lighting being set up beind the light. As the night went on, the models face became a touch redder in color, I liked to be able to add as much red and other colors as possible to the face.
Demo in the sunday morning class, setting up the palette and starting by premixing some colors.

Test Panels for Mural

Here are a couple of panels painted with liquid dispersion paint. I took them over to Larry's Autobody shop and had them coated with industrial clear coat urethane.
Research is continuing for the mural project. Next will be the design stage, soon!