Workshop with William Wray

I haven't been posting a lot in the last months, but this longer hiatus just now was due to me being on vacation ;-).
I spent 10 wonderful days in the Washington, D.C. area - relaxing, sight-seeing (including the National Gallery in D.C. and a personal tour of the Capitol Building!), meeting up with dear friends... and of course painting.

I took a 3-day workshop with William Wray at the Easton Studio & School. What a great experience! I love William's Urban Landscapes - strong, modern yet timeless, often high contrast of light and dark, often wonderful development of colors. The almost abstract nature of some of his paintings definitely speak to me as well.

So of course I was looking forward to taking this short but intense workshop. William started off with a quick demo explaining how he always looks for and makes use of the fundamental idea of a three-value sketch. By identifying shapes of the same value - light, mid-value and dark - and clustering them together in the primary sketch as well as the first layer of painting, it is much easier to achieve a stong composition as well as good darks and lights. And it helps with staying loose and not getting lost in details..!
We spent the first two days sketching an painting outside, mainly concentrating on those three values. While it definitely did take us 'back to basics', it was such a great exercise and it tought me to START. WITH. SKETCHES. Every time, for every painting. Do it!

So, here's one of the sketches, done plain air. Very basic, three values. If the layout in the sketch doesn't work, it's probably not the best idea to do a painting of the subject - especially not plain air where you have just a limited time to paint before the light changes too much.

And that's what a color sketch would look like - still sticking with the three values (more or less....):

The third day we painted inside the studio from photos - still doing the values sketch and the color sketch before doing the 'actual' painting. Here's my first sketch and the painting from it:

  "Gotham Tower"

5" x 7"

 And the final painting for this workshop - William provided a few photos to paint from, and I just loved the strong composition in this one. It did come together very quickly, so I think all the sketching and 'value observing' of the days before did work out here.

"Tracks"

7" x 5"

I really enjoyed the workshop, William's demo, teaching and help, meeting other great artists and last but not least our host Luis. And I'm ready to get painting now!

Hilton Head Island again

I haven't posted in a while, and part of the reason for that is that I've been traveling again. In fact, I'll only fly home tomorrow.

I was lucky to spend two weeks in the US (South and North Carolina and Georgia) and to meet up with friends and to attend another workshop with Karin Jurick. It was fantastic!

Just to give you an impression, here's the first painting I did - after watching Karin do a demo from the same reference picture.

"Sea Watch"

Oils, 8'' x 8''

More to come....

Posted with Blogsy

FeO - brand new and already rusty!

Sorry about the title, I couldn't resist!

This is one of the pieces I did at the workshop a week ago. It's acrylic on canvas, with sand, some collage and of course - the secret ingredient - rust!

"FeO"

Acrylic / Mixed Media on canvas, 32"x40"

Like you might have seen in the pictures from the last post, I started out by covering the canvas with a mixture of sand, marmor flour (?) and acrylic binder (resulting in a home-made modelling past) and played with the sand on canvas until I liked the structure and patterns it created.

Once this first ground layer was dry, I poured a fair amount of watered-down black acrylic on the canvas, moving the canvas, adding water where needed (by spraying or pouring from a water bottle). Again it needed to dry. I might then have added a second layer of black (can't remember) and then the next layer, this dark-beige-brownish color you can see on the right half of the canvas as well as the top left corner. Next layer: orange!

So far so good, but then it got to be really fun:

To the top right corner I added (glued in) a piece of stringy, net-like fabric / paper. Something you might use for wrapping up a nice flower or a present.
Then I made a paste out of iron powder and again acrylic binder and gently brushed this onto the fabric in order for it to add to the to 3D quality of the collage, covering only the elevated parts of the fabric.
So the white you can see above is the dried binder, the grey is the dried iron past.

BUT -  I didn't want iron but was looking for rust. So the iron part got then brushed on with an oxidation agent in order for the iron to start to rust. It only took about one to two hours for the grey paste to turn into...

... the rich sienna-like orange rust you can see above. I also added some rust to the lower left part of the painting and added some smaler fields of color, scribbles and splashes of colors and white.
And as a final touch I used some colored modelling paste and a stencil to add the lettering you can see.

Voilà!

Workshop Impressions

I'm spending one week at the beautiful Lake Constance (German part) to attend a workshop with Gerhard Almbauer. He's a great artist an teacher and we're doing large-size acrylic abstract paintings. I've taken a class with him before, this week now is titled "Earth - Sand - Rust". Doesn't that sound interesting?

Just a few snapshots, I'll post more work in progress pictures and information once I'm back home.

 

 

Cookie's Evening Walk - Hilton Head Island

I realized I haven't posted all the paintings from my workshop with Karin Jurick on Hilton Head Island yet. I painted this next piece on the third day, and I just have to smile whenever I look at it!

 

'Cookie's Evening Walk'
Oil, 8'' x 8''

This is my first painting of a dog and it was such fun - of course Cookie's a cutie, and with her red coat and the setting sun the staging was perfect. Fitting for such a starlet.
Oh, and I don't know her (or his?) real name, but I gave my little niece a toy for Christmas and she calls it Cookie, so I just borrowed that name. I know she won't mind.

I'm considering entering this painting in the 'Sense of Place' - Exhibition at the Sedona Arts Center in February. Have to decide between this and two other options...

Workshop with Karin Jurick on Hilton Head Island

As you know by now I spent a week on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, painting with Karin Jurick and a bunch of great, talented and more importantly fun ladies. I can't rave enough about the great time I had!

'A Perfect Moment'

Oil, 8'' x 10''

On the first day Karin talked about her approach to painting, materials, taking pictures - and turning 'so-so photos' into great paintings. A real eye-opener! So was the demo she did for us, using her own reference photo taken on Hilton Head.
I always enjoy watching a painting demo, I feel like I learn so much by watching a magician like Karin paint. So when on the second day we were using the same reference to do our own version, it felt so much more relaxed than just jumping into cold waters with my own photos.
My painting 'A Perfect Moment' mirrors this feeling.

'Wave Gazing'

Oil, 8'' x 8''

I painted this next piece from a reference photo I had taken just the day before. This little girl had been running around on the beach, and then - for half a minute - she stood still, gazing at the waves. And then the moment was gone and she was off to chase after those funny seagulls...

More on the workshop and more paintings in my next post.

Hilton Head Island, SC

I just returned from two weeks in the south of the USA, mainly South Carolina. For one week I stayed on Hilton Head Island where I was fortunate to attend a painting workshop with Karin Jurick. Lucky me!

I'll post about the workshop soon, but first some photos I took with my wonderful new camera, the Canon Powershot SX40...

... a kindred soul watching the sunrise...

a cute doggie enjoying the walk

Are you looking at me...?