Painting Party Last Weekend

It was a perfect Saturday.  My friend Jordan bought a fantastic farm house in the country and invites his artist friends out to paint every once in a while.  Finally I was able to make one of these now infamous events.  I was actually going to paint inside and start a portrait commission, but the weather and scenery were perfect.  And who could resist painting colorful canoes next to a pond full of flourescent green algae.  It was just too perfect not to paint.  There are so many options for painting at his place.   I can't wait for the next event.   

Red Roses

Here is a quick painting I did of roses.  I really find red roses difficult to paint.  My first session went quickly but didn't like the way the roses looked.  Each  petal was too distinct to the point that it looked outlined. So for session 2, I decided to take another pass at the petals and lose some of the edges.  I am much happier with the results.  Blurry and bad photo.

Fall Class Starting Sept 26, 2013

FALL STILL LIFE PAINTING CLASS
ARTSPACE  HERNDON

September 26-November 21 (no class October 31 - Halloween)
7-10 pm
8 weeks
$200


My fall still life class starts on September 26.  I have two slots open.   We will be painting flowers and fall veggies again, but this time I think I'm going to divide the class into groups.  Those that want to paint live only and those that want to do a combo of live and photo.  The reason being is that I've had several returning students ask how to "finish" a painting and the only way to go from a block-in type of look which is more impressionistic (which I like very much) to a "polished" tighter finish is to layer paint and refine stokes over existing stokes, and glaze and adjust.  It usually takes three layers from my experience before it starts to looks realistic.  The problem is the flowers are long gone by class 3 and pretty weak looking by week 2.

I do buy lots of fresh flowers and there is no materials fee.  I hope we can find peonies (November!!! from South America)  Anyway, here is a sampling of paintings students painted in my last class in the Spring.   I know the lower one was done by a great artist -- Marna Morgan.  I'm sorry to say, I can't remember who did the one above.  They are awesome paintings!

Painting Like Crazy

I have needed my painting fix for a while.  While I've been painting in Kurt Schwarz's summer class, I can't say I finished anything in the class, but now I've spent one full day in the studio and two nights and I've completed 4 paintings that were 90% finished.

Here is one that will be in Berkley Gallery starting in October.