Thoughts on Painting

We started Saturday morning with a lecture by Hai-Ou. I loved her teaching style. She is funny, smart, a phenomenal painter, and full of life. As a teacher, she made it a joy to be there. I like classes where there is a lot of hard work combined with laughter. 

We heard stories of Quick Paint outs, Plein Air festivals, and all of the hard work involved in painting on location. So many people tend to think of painting as a peaceful, relaxing thing to do which is true about 10% of the time. I find the remaining 90% of the time to be physically and mentally demanding, and quite challenging. Don't get me wrong. I love it and at this point in my life it's all I want to do as a job, as well as during any free time I get outside of work hours, but it is draining. The hot tub and a glass of wine are pretty welcome after a 6 hour painting session! I have friends who work 10 hours straight painting and I don't know how they do it. And nothing compares to that feeling when everything is working in your painting and joy and peace take over....that 10% of the time. 

What I love about workshops is you are not painting and thinking about how you're going to frame it for the gallery, if collectors will like it, if it will display well with your other works. You are experimenting, and made to try different things than you do in your own studio. In this case, using the palette knife is a really new skill I am working on. I really only use it to blend colors on my palette, or to apply a really sharp edge to a vase or glass in a painting. During this workshop we divided a canvas into 4 sections and were provided with 2 reference photos to work from on our laptops. We were to paint the first one, then use a palette knife entirely for the second. Here is my canvas:

The top left is brush, and below it is all palette knife. I was frustrated using the palette knife, but there are effects I got in the painting that I could never get with a brush so that was a neat learning moment for me. On the boat, I ran out of time so the bottom is not finished but I like the effect in the water better on the palette knife painting on the bottom. I also rushed it because people were cleaning up and I learned that maybe fussing less and just throwing paint on that painting sometimes results in really expressive work.

I had to skip the Sunday workshop day because it was an 8 hour drive home and I couldn't get back that late. It's a shame because I would have liked to spend the whole day learning about color. Instead, I got to drive 8 hours through the most scenic, colorful landscape I've ever seen in my life. The drive from way up in New Hampshire home through Vermont and New York to Pennsylvania was awe inspiring.

So that's the quick recap of the workshop last weekend. Time to get out in the studio and practice my knife skills.

 Keep those paintbrushes dancing!

Chris