Romel De la Torre Workshop

I wish I could have stayed in the sunny 80 degree weather a bit longer but I am back from my annual trip to Arizona. I try to take a workshop every year at the Scottsdale Artists School, They have the largest selection of classes that I am aware of and they are taught by the best painting and sculpture instructors.

This year I took a figure and portrait class with Romel de la Torre, whose work can be seen here. He is an excellent oil painter who spent a lot of time talking about technique, color temperature and brush strokes. It was a fun class.

It was recommended for the class, so I purchased a roll of Utrecht Double Oil Primed Belgian Linen Roll, Type 820, Smooth Texture and I did not realize until I was in class that there was a long thread embedded in the primer. It is currently on sale here and although I got it for a good price I was not expecting that kind of low quality from an oil primed linen. I didn't really notice until I started painting and by then it was too late.
Oh well, it was just a study. This is the one and only picture of my painting of the man we painted the first day. I chopped it up and used the remnants for some plein air paintings.

abt. 20" x 16"

The thread running through the middle of the canvas. sigh

 Here is the instructor, Romel de la Torre, with his finished painting.

Things I Learn from Teaching Workshops

I like to look at every experience as an opportunity to learn something new, even when I'm the teacher! It keeps my eyes open to new ways of seeing and my mind thinking about new ways to do things. Last week I taught another workshop on painting animals. Since it was a week-long class I decided to start with a drawing lesson first. I truly believe that you can't be a good painter until you've mastered drawing. Many people take one of my classes and come in with no drawing experience, and they're able to turn out some nice generic landscapes. However, to actually learn and understand how to model three dimensional objects drawing skills are a must.

We started with a cat and learned an easy way to get proportions right by using one standard unit of measure, in this instance the distance from the outside of the cat's left eye to the outside of it's right eye. Then we used that measurement to judge the proportions of everything else when we put our marks down. Even the 12 year olds (the youngest I allowed in the class) seemed to understand this.

We started our acrylic paintings the next day. Everyone tried to paint my little Gold Retriever puppy with the rose, and most of them were successful. A few students wanted to branch out on their own projects and that was OK with me too.

Two people in the class had been creating art for many, many years and to my great surprise these students were the slowest to grasp the concepts I was teaching. I do not think this was a case of not being able to teach an old dog new tricks. I've never believed that anyway. Dogs are smart and they can learn a new trick at any age. What I do believe is that these artists had been doing things in a different way for so many years that they actually BLINDED themselves to the possibility of doing it another way. At some point in their artistic journey their minds had become closed to the possibilities. I don't believe this was intentional. I think it happens whenever you become too focused on the process instead of the results. I have noticed that a lot of artists can tell me what they want to do: paint looser, forget the detail etc.. I'm not sure these artists have every tried to do this on their own though. They wait for someone to come along and SHOW them how, when they should be figuring out on their own how to achieve this, putting in some practice time and then ironing out the details at a workshop. Instead they expect to master the whole concept in one week. It can't be done.

On the other hand, the students who had no idea how to proceed were able to follow along more easily as they had no preconceptions about HOW to achieve the result they wanted. I've included a few pictures of the participants and some of the student's work here. It was an acrylic painting class but I admit to taking my dog home and doctoring him up with my oil paints. :)

Acrylic Painting Class in Bryan

I'm doing a four week painting class in Bryan and we started off all painting the same thing. I did a Powerpoint presentation showing the painting step-by-step and gave them some info on color and how to block in and we were off an running. Next week they get to choose from flowers or a landscape. I like to have them all do the same thing the first night so I can get an idea of how much experience they have. The subject was a rowboat with Ocracoke Lighthouse int he background. Everyone did quite well!

My version of the painting we did is below.

10 Days in Arizona

I attended a workshop at the Scottsdale Artists School earlier this month. The three day workshop was given by Nancy Seamons Crookson, and titled Lessons on Russion Colorist painting. The workshop was based on color theory she learned from Sergei Bongard, a Russian artist who immigrated to the United States and taught students in Utah in the 70's.

Nancy did a demo of a still life the first day and we all did the same thing. The second day we had a great model for a half day. His name was Miguel and he was dressed as a pirate. I worked on him for three hours on Saturday and another two hours on Sunday, the final day of the workshop.

I love the way this turned out and I had fun using Nancy's method of making a blue underpainting as a base. Lends the piece a mysterious and unusual feel. I found it was possible to achieve a very realistic looking painting in a short period of time using her strategy. In keeping with what I try to do when I take a workshop, I will use her methods for a three month period and evaluate what I like and don't like at that point.

11" x 14" Miguel

Around the Bend 20" x 24"

This is a studio painting I did this week in Marc Hanson's workshop. The day was overcast when I did the outdoor study. I worked on it for about 7 hours in the workshop and finished it in another 2-3 hours at home. The lesson learned here is to keep my greens cool, especially on a cool day.