Friday, November 9, 2012

Workshops!

My watercolorist friend in the UK, Laura Moore, mentioned on Facebook that she's taking her first workshop this week.  That brought back thoughts of the first watercolor workshop I took which was one year ago.  Laura said in her post that she's nervous.  I was very nervous too, knew I'd be the worst in the class, etc.  But it turned out to be so much fun, I learned a lot, and I made some friends at the workshop that I still see at local watercolor events.

Andy Evansen from Minnesota taught the workshop.  I was so lucky to find out about it and get one of the last spots.  I knew of Andy's beautiful watercolors from his postings on Facebook so when I heard about the class in my area I signed up.

I'll share one of the paintings I did in the class.  It's from a photo of mine shot at Lotusland in Montecito, CA.  A year later, I would paint this differently I think.  Andy taught us to paint a value study (using Payne's Gray) as a first step before starting a painting, and he did the same before each of his demos.  Must say, a value painting or sketch really helps with planning the values, and I don't consistently do that.  I'll share a couple photos of Andy, one with his really nice value study.  Since the workshop was in Long Beach, one day after class we walked to a nearby marina so we could watch Andy paint a plein air piece.  Even though the sun was going down quickly he took the time to paint a value study.  I hope I can take another class from Andy sometime.






         

5 comments:

  1. Great painting. I liked how you edited it to give is more focus.

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  2. I'm such a big fan of workshops, and I'd love to attend an Andy Evans one if he ever comes my way. I've always liked this painting of yours.

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    1. Thanks Terry! Workshops are so much fun, and informative of course!

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