Day#1: ted nuttall workshop/la crosse.........for marta

the first day of our ted nuttall workshop down at the pumphouse broke clear and dry. imagine that! i figured that augured well for the rest of the day. all participants who were attending got there without a hitch and we were off and learning from a very gifted teacher and painter.

ted started out the day talking about how he got started in watercolor and the influence his mother (an artist herself) had on him and his art career.

from there he did an overview of the week and reviewed some principles that we should all keep in mind as we moved forward in our art. they included but were not necessarily limited to.....you must enjoy and truly love the process because, art is work and may not necessarily be fun, that being nervous and afraid of the stark white paper is okay but to approach each painting as if it MIGHT be your best work eschewing the idea that it is "just a piece of paper". there were probably any number of other things that he shared with us but since i left my notes back at the pumphouse i can't remember them....must not be that important (he said knowing that might not be the case but the product of an increasingly older brain).  if there is anything else upon review when i return to the pumphouse i will append this report. lastly but perhaps most impotently....SLOW DOWN and THINK before putting down a brush stroke.
  
this demo included how he drew the figure and briefly how he composed the picture. it was a photo of a young dancer sitting deep in thought before a performance. he demo'd how he puts on a high-key multi-hued wash over the flesh of her face, arms, and exposed torso. he used no less that 6 different colors including vermillion, aureolin, manganese blue, alizarin crimson, mineral violet, raw sienna.....and maybe a couple more...all applied with a #16 kolinski sable (raphael?) round brush. these were put on unmixed and allowed to mingle on the paper. with this wash dry, he put in the lightest value of the hair and then started painting the eyes. he likes to treat each of these little areas in the painting as a small abstract painting itself using good edges and a variety of colors. much of the modeling and defining of the features was done with a combination of vermillion, brilliant orange (holbein), and manganese blue mixed slightly on the palette. he tries to keep the background moving forward in concert with the figure and to that end put sown some warm splotches of color next to the figure in various places to start covering up some of the "white". he finished out the demo portion at the end of the morning by starting to put in some of the shadow shapes on her dress using a combination of ultramarine blue and burnt umber (i think...maybe burnt sienna) to make a neutral gray.

we broke for lunch and started in on our own painting adventure in the afternoon while ted went around and gave each person individual attention and instruction.

here is what i started working on: