Purple Haze

I'm taking a workshop with Maggie Price this week! She is teaching for 5 days, but alas I can only take the class for the first two days, so want to make the most of it. But today was the first day. Maggie was there with her husband Bill Canright. The weather was not conducive to working outdoors, so we worked in the studio using our own photos as references.

It was definitely different for me. We had to use white Wallis paper, and then lay on an underpainting lightly with pastels, and then use turpenoid to make a wash of the colors. I've heard some teachers suggest that for the underpainting you should use complimentary colors to the final layers. But Maggie feels you should use colors similar to the finished layer, but very bright and vibrant versions.

As she puts it - if you use dull or muted colors for the underpainting it's hard to brighten up later. And also she reminded us that one way of making gray is to mix complimentary colors. So that's what she feels you don't want to use compliments for the underpainting. You are setting yourself up for a grayish hue to your painting.

So it was fun to try a painting, with her critiques. I actually did two paintings today, and this is the first of them. This scene is taken from one of my photos from Greece, looking out over the Gulf of Corinth from the seaside hotel I stayed at for a couple of days, just south of the city of Patras.

The Wine-dark Sea

It was back to art class last week after a few weeks' break. I have not been feeling inspired lately, too busy with dealing with my upcoming job loss, and trying to get my house on the market. I think all my paintings, frames and art supplies will have to go into storage to reduce the "clutter". And I could hardly imagine what I wanted to paint last night, but finally chose a photo with the above scene, taken back in 1994 when I went on a trip to Greece. This shows the pathway to the beach at a hotel outside of Patras that we stayed at for a couple days, right on the edge of the Ionian Sea.

This was done on Wallis paper, an unusual support for me, as I find it too "toothy" for the most part, a real pastel-eater. But I had some remaining sheets from a 9x12 pad and figured I might as well use one.

Corinthian Sunrise

Art has actually been rather far from my mind the last few days, as I knew the birth of my first grandson was imminent! Little John Henry finally made his appearance last night, at 6:18 PM on September 8. He's a big boy! 8 pounds 10.6 ounces, and 23 inches long, at birth. I took the day off from work and spent a few hours with him and his parents this afternoon.

But I left in mid-afternoon, and was able to get to my weekly art class tonight. I was too tired to tackle anything too complicated, and ended up choosing to do this picture of a sunrise that I took 15 years ago on a trip to Greece, when I was staying at a hotel right on the edge of the Gulf of Corinth, and got up early one morning to see the sun rise, and take a series of photos of it.

But the following picture is the one that is really consuming all my spare moments - a photo of little John Henry, my new grandson!

Corinthian Blue

I finished my 'Olympic Gold' painting at 8:45 PM on Tuesday, and class runs until 9:30, so Christina told me I had 45 minutes to do a second painting. I chose another Greek ref photo, of a walkway down to the beach along the Gulf of Corinth, and since the first picture had so many hot colors I chose a different palette for this one, mostly cool blues and lavenders. I raced like mad to get something more or less complete and recognizable in 45 minutes, and this is what I came up with for the second painting of the night.

These exercises were tons of fun and I had a great time in class this week.

Olympic Gold

It's back to Greece for me, and getting wild and crazy. In art class Tuesday Christina had a series of paintings done by artists she admired - and our assignment was to take a ref photo of our own choosing, and to try to paint the scene, but using the color palette of one of the paintings she had to show us. Plus she wanted us to *simplify simplify simplify* and just go with big, broad, basic shapes, though she wanted buildings or man-made objects. I chose a ref photo, of my trip to Greece, of the entranceway to the stadium at Olympia, home of the ancient Olympic games. My ref photo is the basic sort of dusty browns, grays, olives and tans that one might expect in Greece, but I chose the color palette of a painting that was mostly all vivid orange, gold, red and purple - and used those colors for my palette! And just turned off my thinking brain and let my fingers take over! So this is what I came up with. One odd thing in the photo is that the underside of the archway shows as a pale bue, but it's actually much darker than that. I  used a pale blue as  an underlayer but then used darker blues and purples on top. I wonder why only the underlayer shows? It makes the painting look a bit "weird". 

Sunrise on the Gulf of Corinth

This is done from a reference photo I took in 1994 when I went on a trip to Greece with my son and a group from his school. It was the trip of a lifetime for me! All my life I had been fascinated by Greece - Greek history, Greek mythology. It was one of those places I had yearned to see all my life, but never dreamed I would get there. 

So when this trip opportunity came up it was too much to resist! I had to go, and I think it was a good experience for my son as well, who was 15 at the time.  Most of the time we stayed in city hotels, but for two nights we stayed at a lovely place out in the country - outside the city of Patras -  that was right on the Gulf of Corinth, and one of those mornings I got up early to watch the sun rise, and I took the photo I used here as a ref, along with others. I might have to try more and do a Greek series, What fun.