Yes, I’m a day late with this post. My excuse is just that learning stuff is hard work.

Saturday (day 2) of the workshop focused on allowing students to explore their ideas using the tools from day 1. I did a couple sketches, continued work on the “failed paintings” from day 1, and started two new paintings.

“Cosmos” – ice painting start, acrylic flowers, watercolor background, collage in corners. Unfinished.

“Stretch” – reworked failed painting with collage, stamping, and gesso. Unfinished.

“Masked” – new painting. Forward trees gesso and rice paper. Watercolor wash start. Unfinished.

“Old Woman Wrasse” – new painting. Watercolor. Background with hand-created stamp; fish with bubble wrap texture for start.

So at the end of the day, what did I learn? I’m still thinking about it, but here are some ideas.

1. Keep painting.
2. When all else fails, add interest.
3. Others usually don’t think your painting is as bad as you do (or they are very polite).
4. If you’ve come to a place where a painting is failed… tear it up for collage. Or gesso over it… Or stamp… Or….
5. My ideas are good. Follow through.
6. Don’t rely on color for your only interest.
7. Be bold with shapes.
8. No one else knows what they are doing either.
9. It can take years to finish a painting.
10. Other artists struggle to finish too.
11. A series is not repeating the same painting over and over again; it’s exploring an idea. And one painting can lead to the next.
12. Stamps.

I have been really struggling to paint the last few months. Moving and then the holidays just really took the wind out of whatever sails were still around.

So, when a Margaret Godfrey workshop was advertised at the Brownsville Art Center (now juts 45 minutes away from me,) I knew I had to sign up. In addition to being a great artist and a really nice person, Margaret is one of the people on Facebook who regularly “get me in trouble.” She posts interesting things that give me ideas and make me wonder about stuff.

The title of Margaret’s workshop is “Bridge Between Abstract and Realism”; the workshop centers around ideas and techniques to get you out of your comfort zone and trying new things.

The workshop really began last evening (Thursday) with a lecture by Margaret about her art. Unfortunately, I chose to miss her lecture to go to my critique group. It was a good trade-off, but I would have enjoyed hearing more about Margaret’s history and techniques.

We started off the morning learning how to make stamps to use in our work. Margaret feels that stamp are a way to embed personal identity into work, even when they are used in layers. We make stamps two ways: carved into Moo Carve with a lino-cutter, and cut out of craft foam and attached to foam core.

I had a lot of fun with this.

Next we used watercolors to “stain” rice paper (a thin paper typically associated with tradition Chinese and Japanese painting.) It’s nearly transparent, so even when color is added to it (or in my case, the paper came with a bit of extra texture) it allows for some really beautiful combinations.

[image removed]

I also liked the piece of paper I put under the rice paper to catch the dribbles.

[image removed]

After lunch, Margaret demoed using unstained rice paper as a “start” by using white gesso to attach it to her watercolor paper. When this dries, it will give her (or other artists) an interesting texture with which to start a painting.

Then she encouraged us to work on some ideas, either reworking old paintings or starting new with some of the day’s tools.

I had a very hard time getting started, but Margaret encouraged me and once I got going, I did well. I started a rework on an old, failed painting.

[image removed]

I used my new “wind” stamp to add texture in back of the horse. I tore up some old paintings and collaged them along the bottom, then gessoed rice paper below that. Finally, I used some extra “mud” (paints mixed on the palette that no longer have any pure color” to stain the gesso before it dried.

We’ll see what happens. It really can’t get any worse.

I also reworked another painting, but I didn’t catch a photo of it.

It can be hard in a workshop to keep everyone occupied fully at all times. In the downtimes, I worked on a value sketch of an idea for a series.

[image removed]

Margaret has done a lot of work in series, and I wanted to get her opinion on whether this idea of a series focusing on the feet of racehorses, specifically when their horseshoes catch the light (like in Shoes & Shadows) was worth following up on. I got her at the end of the day and she was very encouraging. Her advice was not to get too focused on repeating the same drawing (what I thought a series had to be) but to focus repeats of the feet and shoes idea. She also suggested that I look at color; she noted I love color, but that this might be a series to explore going in more neutral direction with just pops of color.

Lots to think about there.

Totally looking forward to tomorrow!

This weekend is the spring Watercolor Society of Oregon convention, held at the Oregon Garden.

First, let me say, “WOW! What a show!” Held at the stunning Oregon Garden, the art STILL manages to eclipse the grounds. If you have some extra time, head out and prepare to be dazzled!

I was disappointed not to get into the show, but it’s such as strong show that I’ll be the judge had a time deciding what the best entries were! It takes a little of the sting out.

Class 1

I always think the point of conventions is to take as many classes as I can. In the last few years WSO has gone to a slightly more doable schedule of class-lecture-class (in the past you could occasionally get in photos-class-paint out-lecture-class-class-paint-out.) I still try to get in as much actual painting time as possible.

The first class of the day was by a local painter I greatly admire for her use of shape (simplified) and color (intense): Sally Bills Bailey. This class was going to focus on those issues.

Sally started us out with the color part. She gets her signature intense color by using a “skipper brush” with LOTS of color directly on the paper. She warms up by just making squares of different colors together. Here are some of my attempts.

I now want to buy a skipper brush.

Next, she does a very simple drawing in a light yellow on her paper… and goes to work! I bought some sketches from a recent meeting and did my best to experiment with her style. Two were pretty bad, but this one was only mediocre.

I do like the color intensity and that I didn’t get caught up in getting anything too realistic. I’m planning some more experiments… with a skipper brush.

Critique

The juror of this show is Kathleen Conover. If I had the time available, I would have liked to take her workshop. Ms. Conover is the “inventor” of the ice painting technique I’ve played with in the past and I very talented, experimental artist. But alas, pesky job…

In the “middle” of the Saturday schedule the juror usually gives to critiques. These are very well attended, with close to a hundred people flooding the hall to see what the juror has to say about their pieces. I was not able to get my piece into the critique, but I felt like I learned a lot from her critiques of others work. Sometimes this is not the case (see my blog post from the Spring 2014 show.)

Class 2

After the critique I went for a second class on Golden (a brand name) mediums. Normally, this wouldn’t be my thing, but the class promised to let us play with both high flow and liquid acrylics, which I have been hearing great things about.

The class was a bit of a sales pitch for all things Golden, but the experimenting time did happen.

Golden’s brand of watercolors is called Qor. There are many fancy attributes (supposedly) but I wasn’t so impressed that I’m gonna run right out and purchase anything there.

Golden also makes a variety of “grounds.” These are, essentially, things that you spread on paper to give the paper a particular texture and/or effect. We were given a sample of coldpress ground, watercolor ground, and another I can’t remember. The watercolor ground was nice, but I just don’t see the point.

We used the various acrylics on these grounds.

Liquid acrylic on Coldpress Ground

Liquid Acrylic on Watercolor Ground

Highflow Acrylic on regular watercolor paper

Qor watercolor on regular watercolor paper outlined with Highflow Acrylic

The thing I really want to get, from this demo, was these little bottles with a stainless steel tip.

I wasn’t able to find the exact item online, but this is close. Load some Highflow Acrylic in one of those bottles and you could generate some AWESOME calligraphic line. One gal in class was really good at it (no me, unfortunately.)

And a little business

This show, of course, is the last before “my” Oregon City convention in October. So I spent a great deal of time between my classes talking to people and making sure we were all on the same page.

Tomorrow I have my first (and hopefully last) meeting with the whole convention crew. It’s down to knitty-gritty time now.

Summary

When I got home, of course I checked my Facebook wall. A friend had posted this:

That’s a pretty good summary!