Monday, June 27, 2011

Lyrical Beauties!

"Lyrical Beauties"
20x16 oil on stretched linen

It's 11:00 pm and I JUST finished this painting and thought I might as well post it now, who needs sleep right??  Each year I do what ever it takes to paint my peonies who's lives are oh so short!  With my last weekend's plein air workshop and my peonies deciding to open while I was off teaching, by the time I got to paint them they were getting pretty droopy. However, their heavy droopiness provided a nice "lyrical" composition for me, hence it's name "Lyrical Beauties!"  I did photograph process of this piece but will post that at a later time.  For now, I hope you enjoy my latest piece!  

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

3 Day Plein Air Workshop

I spent the weekend teaching the first half of my annual 3 day plein air workshop.  This is a consecutive workshop with the second half in August.  We start in June by building on our foundation skills of plein air painting.  The students then have the chance to apply the skills during summer and continue on in August.  It's a very beneficial way to teach and for students to apply what they're learned and hone in on those skills, then come back and move further.  The progress I see is truly remarkable!  The group was a hard working bunch of painters!  I was fun to see all their growth in such a short period of time.  Below is one of my demos and pictures of the gang painting.  
Thanks to all those who attended, I had a great time!
"Sunday Serenity"
8x10 oil on linen panel -sold-
This is my demo from Sunday morning.  
We decided Sunday Serenity would be the perfect title for this painting!
Here's most of the 'gang', 16 total watching my Sunday morning demo.  It was a bit chilly, 53 degrees, so we were all pretty layered in attempt to keep the damp chill out.  They (weather peeps) kept promising sun but we didn't see much of that all weekend, at least we dodged the rain!

Here's the gang working hard on value structure!

A peek over Doug and Angie's should of what we were painting.  Lake Elmo Park Reserve is really a perfect place to paint!