frank eber workshop and start of a new painting

new orleans on a gray afternoon

last week i attended the frank eber workshop sponsored by the venus studio and gallery in palm desert. with nearly 3 hours of commute each day there wasn't any time for blogging about it at the time. now i am off to start another painting and to practice what i think i learned at the workshop.

a new york street corner

the workshop was about landscapes and frank has a unique way of delivering the information. he talks for about 15-20 minutes to cover what will be done over the next hour or so. then he demos a particular technique of area of the current painting that he (and the whole class are) is working on...more about that in  minute. then the class paints using that technique on the same basic painting. he passes out photos that he has taken and each class member works on the same scene. he walks around to each person as they are working and critiques/suggests/demos to make sure they understand how to do it and can actually perform the task. then he moves on to the next step for the next 30-60 minutes and turns the class loose on that next step..... the whole thing repeats itself until the painting is finished. then on to the next scene. the sequence of scenes were basically moving from relatively simple 3 step landscape to a more complex meadow scene, on to a waterscape with reflections of buildings, and finished with a relatively complicated cityscape. here are the completed paintings that i did that i actually remembered to take photos of before posting this entry. all in all a productive week and the major thing that i learned was a new way of putting down a wet in wet wash that i hadn't been exposed to before. like all new things it will take a bit of practice to improve my technique, but at this point i can see using it quite a bit even in my figure and portrait work...along with continuing to try my hand at the landscape.



i started a new portrait-style painting the day before the workshop began and here are the initial two stages of the painting. it is based on a photo taken by the always excellent and generous steve evans of a girl living in madagascar. it is 15"X11" on 300# fabriano artistico hot press paper. i managed to get a reddish splotch on the light-struck side of her face during the initial light underwash that i am not particularily fond of. i will have to figure out a way to deal with it. i think that bringing the values of the rest of the painting up to where i would like them will be the first step. it may just become a non-issue at that point.

off to paint.