Wine Country Retreat

I was looking through my photos this morning and came across shots from the Wine Country Mentoring Retreat Wendy and I just did in Dundee, Oregon. We were fortunate with weather, our hostess was generous, students engaged and good cooks too! This year was a bit of an experiment. It was a very small group and we all roomed together and made meals together. Next year we'll open it up to a larger group with the option to stay at a B&B up the road a bit. We'll host a meet & greet and one dinner. After that, students will be on their own for meals. If students stay at the main retreat building, (Maresh), there is a beautiful full kitchen for our use.

The workshop itself will be a bit more formal in content and structure than we did this year. But critiques will still be in the evening with a glass of wine!! Very nice.

We've already booked the retreat for October 7-9, 2011. Sign up early!!

Drawing for Painting

I went to a life drawing studio yesterday and spent a blissful three hours drawing. It really reminded me of the importance of drawing in painting. If you don't do too much drawing, maybe try to make a little time for it.

Some artists maintain that you don't really need to know how to draw in order to be a good painter. I really disagree with this. I think you can kind of get by depending on your style of painting, but your painting will be much more confident and strong, if you have a good drawing foundation.

The landscape has so much about it that is reminiscent of the figure. Rolling hills are like a human body;  knowing how to show how one form meets another, what is in front and what is behind, what happens in those small spaces? Mark making to not just explain value, hue, intensity and texture, but also to describe the topography of the landscape. This is all about drawing. HUGE!!!

So what can a painter do to strengthen their drawing skills. Well, though it's really been said so much, keeping a sketch book is key. I keep two kinds of sketch books; one is just thumbnails which I create from photos, imagination, and on site while plein air painting, the other sketchbook is life sketches of people and places. I also attempt to sketch from the TV occasionally. It's really hard!!

I also try to keep my life drawing skills sharp by going to drop-in sessions in a couple local studios. This is hard, but really rewarding work. If you can draw the figure, you can draw anything. The demands of the foreshortened figure challenge your perception, forcing you to get proportion and perspective correct. Architecture becomes simple if you can master the figure.

Here are a few of my favorite books on drawing:

Dynamic Figure Drawing by Burne Hogarth

           

Drawing the Human Head by Burne Hogarth

           

Drawing the Head and Figure by Jack Hamm

           

A Foundation for Expressive Drawing by E.J. Tomasch (out of print)

             

Creative Illustration by Andrew Loomis (out of print)

The model, Chris, was pretty hard to draw because he was really thin, yet muscular. I had a hard time getting his gesture down, but liked the drawings better today than when I did them yesterday.  These were done at Hipbone Studio in Portland. Jeff offers lots of opportunities for drop-in sessions. He has some long term pose sessions too. It's a nice studio, well lite, clean and comfortable. Only $10.00 for three hours of drawing. A pretty good deal, I think. I brought my small pastel box with me and did one drawing on Wallis paper that I toned with yellow ochre and one on Colorfix paper. Happy drawing and painting!!

 

Seduced

All day, I've been trying to work on my website and organize my office, but alas.... I've been seduced by the color, texture and loveliness of my pastels.. Just painting.....Hope you are too!!!

Finding A Groove

So, now I'm back in the studio for a good long stretch. I have blank walls, blank sheets of beautiful paper and empty canvas to delve into. How to start and not just start, but start with purpose and intention. I have pages and pages of thumbnails for ideas,(more on those later!), and beautiful photos of all the verdant and magical places I had the good fortune to visit this year.

So now I'll try to pull these ideas together to create several bodies of work, that will be the foundation for my shows next year.

I have a white board at the entry to my painting studio that helps keep me on track. Having intention being the phrase that I always go back to. A teacher of mine, Britt, asked recently what we are truly longing for? Searching for the answer to this goes hand in hand with having intention.

And then, "Did you kill it today", meaning did I go full out towards that intention/longing?? Did I give it my all?? This will be a challenge of almost monumental proportions, ha, ha!! Especially with the holidays coming up. We will see and I'll try to share my progress with you.

Gee Wiz!!! Lots of Prizes!!

Well, it's been a pretty good month or so.... I won the Savoire Faire award at the Pastel Society of America for my Variation #6, I received an honorable mention for "In the Studio" in the Pastel Journal, Pastel 100 still life catagory and I received third place in the IAPS web show for my piece "Green & Blue". WOW!!! Don't mean to gloat or anything like that.... Thanks for all this support and validation. It truly is tremendous!!!

Time for Teaching and Time for Painting

I've always maintained that I want to be a painter, not a painting teacher. I think this comes from my distaste for that saying that those who can "do" and those who can't "teach". I don't think this is always true and probably not a fair statement because I've been very fortunate to have had more than a few instructors who "could". Lately, however, I've found myself in the position of having to make some hard choices about my time. I love, love teaching. It's social and makes me walk my talk and informs my work in unexpected ways.

I've traveled away from my studio and home this year and seen some beautiful amazing places, met some very wonderful people and had my breath taken away by student work. Not a bad way to spend ones times. I feel so fortunate to be able to help students either rekindle a creative inclination or expand on their already burning desire to be creatively productive. It's been wonderful in ways I can't begin to count.

After this week teaching in Bend, Oregon, I'll settle back in the studio for a bit and hopefully get my own creative juices flowing. I have many ideas for new work. I'm especially inspired by the scenery in Wisconsin. The verdant woods and open fields, seem like a perfect playground for my work. I'm anxious to try out some oil pastel as well as oils and soft pastel.

So, I'll put my 2011 schedule together thoughtfully and mindful of what my intentions are. Teaching will be an important part of the mix.