Another workshop at Sun City

Great all-day oil class today at Sun City. We started with a landscape. Then worked on some pears while the landscape dried a little before we proceeded with the next step. What a talented, hard-working and interesting group!  My upcoming class schedule may be seen on my website
http://dianemorganpaints.com/collections/43797

Wednesday's watercolor workshop

Had a great workshop yesterday with 14 students at Rancho Casa Blanca. It's a great group of gals that meets every month to paint and bring in different instructors each month.  They are real workers.  They worked all day with hardly a peep.  I presented two demos.  One of an acorn and leaves and a lemon.  Most of them worked on both. And, dang....I forgot to take a photo of their finished pieces!  I spent more time walking around and helping so didn't finish my two pieces.  Work in progress  "Lemon Scent"  watercolor 12" x 12"

Golden Pears workshop today

These are my ladies with their almost complete paintings from today's workshop at Rancho Casa Blanca. They all did such a great job. It was a fun day.

Watercolor Workshop

I taught my first watercolor workshop today. I selected 2 pears on a mirror with clouds reflected to use as my demo from which they copied. I didn't know the skill level of the 15 participants and wanted to select a fairly easy shape to paint with a background that is forgiving. They all did great! You never know when you do something new how it will turn out. It was fun. I actually liked doing it. They say if life doesn't give you butterflies once in awhile your life is too boring. What can be better than getting paid to do something you love and meeting nice people at the same time. Not much :-}

Watercolor Workshop with Eric Wiegardt

I'm taking a wonderful 4-day workshop with Eric Wiegardt, AWS NWS, author of "Watercolor Free and Easy." Today was day one. We brought our own photos of boat scenes to paint from. Eric stresses that values are more important than the color in a successful painting, so we all did value sketches before beginning. Also, today's challenge was to be more free when mixing colors....to merge colors on the palette and on the paper, rather than creating a finished color to put directly on the paper. Top left is the reference photo. Top right is the value study. We all did very loose, wet-in-wet paintings on full-sheet, 21" x 31" 140# rough watercolor paper. Eric's style is loose, yet skillfully controlled. We tried to emulate. He instructed to find the pattern first of light and midtones. Think about the design of the painting. Refer often to the value study over the photo. You can't think about design when your mind is on the photo. My work today resulted in a 2-hour, approximately 70% complete painting. Most of the values and shapes are in. Some detail in the figures and shadow strengthening are yet to be finished. All-in-all a fun and informative day. Looking forward to tomorrow.