"Back to Basics", and a New Class

"Back to Basics", 12x12", Oil on Gessoboard

Whenever I'm feeling a bit rusty, I like to go back to my art school days, and paint the basics.  Fruit, elipses, and cloth are wonderful subjects to sharpen my focus and observation skills.  And I never tire of painting a still life setup, no matter how simple.  Even though the cloth may be orange, I challenge myself to find other colors to describe the cloth without going too bright.  And pears almost always have cool colors (green, blue) and warm colors (red, orange, yellow) wandering around in them.  Even the bowls are painted with many underlying colors to make them appear more complex, and to give the painting some atmosphere.

I'll be teaching an all day class at the BCAC Studio in the Ice House Mall in Barrington on April 6th, and we'll be talking about brushes and brushwork.  Beginning, intermediate, and advanced students sometimes need to "brush up" on what brush to use when!  Filberts, flats, brights, rounds, and palette knives all have their jobs to do.  Let me know if you'd like to join us in April by sending me an email, and I'll supply you with the details.

Teaching Notes: It's Not Easy Being Green!

Over the weekend, I spent some time at Crabtree Nature Preserve with some intrepid landscape enthusiasts.  Our mission: to paint a predominantly green landscape with interesting color and solid values (like us!).

We started our very green project with a bright red wash. Red, as we know, is the complement of green, so we had a nice color vibration underneath our painting from the outset.  We then drew in the major shapes of the landscape using the same bright red color on our drawing brushes.

It's hard to see the forest for the trees!  In order to see the major value areas and shapes, we turned our reference photos upside down. This forces our minds to quiet down and stop commanding us to paint in a certain way.  We can more easily observe our subject as puzzle pieces of value and color.

Instead of painting our landscape in green, green, and more green, we asked ourselves, "what other colors can be used in this value area?" Out came surprising combinations of purple, orange, and blue, just to name a few.

A few of the finished products!  Way to go, artists!!!

AND NOW FOR A PROGRAMMING NOTE:

I'm putting together my teaching schedule at Mainstreet in Lake Zurich, IL for next year, so I'd love to know if there is a workshop or class you'd be interested in.  So far, I've had requests for Palette Knife, Fracturing, and Color Workshops.  The Portrait and Impressionism Classes have also been popular, but I want to offer what YOU are interested in, so if you have any thoughts, shoot me an email or leave me a comment here.

And thank you!