Monday, September 14, 2009

Weekend with the Masters 3


16" x 20" oil on stretched canvas
$195.00 + $10. s/h
contact me if interested

Our yard has been filled with zinnias the last few weeks. I wanted to try a bouquet of flowers instead of a daily painting focusing on one flower.



During yesterday's Weekend with the Artist workshop sponsored by the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center and American Artist Magazine, I attended a demo by well known Colorado artist Skip Whitcomb. Part way through the demo it started raining. Luckily we were on the Lake Terrace at the Broadmoor, so we pulled lots of big patio umbrellas over to our spot, and Skip continued to paint, and we were all out of the rain. It was great to see a demo of an overcast day. Since Colorado is known for it's sunny weather, 300 sunny days/year, I tend to avoid going out to paint when the weather's bad. As we say here, "Just wait an hour, and the weather will change." This might change my way of thinking.

Some of Skip's main points were:
-"abstract" means we're looking for shapes, values, colors that we can arrange in our world, our canvas
-simpliciy is power--the more you put in, the weaker the statement becomes
-he keeps a sketchbook and always does thumbnails first(before a painting)
-use the golden mean for you center of interest
-he uses veridean only to mix grays, not for greens

A couple of weeks ago I received an email from Laurel Daniel saying she was coming to Colorado Springs to attend the Weekend with the Masters workshop. We saw each other off and on over the 4 days and last night she came over for dinner. We spent several great hours sharing and visiting. We found we have many things in common, including: we met our husbands in the 7th grade, we both studied for one year in Sweden. Who would have known! I had a fun evening w/ a new friend all made possible because of blogging and the internet.

6 comments:

Nancy B. Hartley said...

Pam, Love the zinnias, beautiful colors! Also love the comments from "Weekend with the Masters" artists. Wish that I was there.
Your get together with Laurel Daniel sounds wonderful! Thanks for all the great sharing on your terrific blog!

Pam Holnback said...

Thanks Cathyann, I now want to do more large paintings. This one was fun to do.

Nancy, Thanks so much. Seeing all these masters was so motivating, as well as instructive.

Sandra Galda said...

thanks for sharing! Sounds like wonderful weekend!

Pam Holnback said...

Sandra, It was an incredible weekend. So many masters in 1 place!

labrown said...

Thanks for the posts on the WWTM sessions for those of us that could not be there Pam. I also wondered during the day if the weather was making things more "fun". Sounds like you made the most of your time. P.S. So glad to meet another Colorado Springs painter! /Lee

Mary Sheehan Winn said...

Great post and fun to hear about you and Laurel. Isn't the blogosphere a great place? I am learning, especially from Laurel's latest post that there's always a way to paint bad weather.