American Artist Workshop Magazine Fall Issue

I recently heard from blogger friend Cathyann Burgess that she saw me in American Artist Workshop Fall Magazine.  Then I heard from my sister, Natalie Italiano, that she'd seen me, too.  So, I decided to buy the magazine.  And, here I am last summer in Michael Klein's Flower Painting workshop in NYC.  

I feel like I look so serious, but I guess I'm just concentrating!  The second shot I'm sketching in the still life.  Not sure when the next time will be that there will be a photo of me painting in a magazine! 

Here I am sitting right next to Michael working on my still life.  I guess this is my 15 minutes of fame for this month!

Michael Klein Workshop Day 3

100 Garden & Flower Oil Paintings - 31/100

Day 3 of Michael Klein's workshop was spent on one still life.  Because this was not enough time to complete one, I chose to focus in on the main gladiola bloom and lightly block in the rest of the flowers. 
His palette includes:  Titanium white, Raw sienna light, Yellow ochre pale, Cad yellow pale, Cad orange, Cad red deep, Burnt sienna, Alizaron crimson, Raw umber, Burnt umber, Cobalt blue, Ultramarine, blue, Ivory black, Cobalt violet and Viridian green.  This is a much different palette than I'm used to, making it a great challenge.  Many of these colors I'd never used; he uses Cobalt violet only for mixing, not for flower colors.

Here's a picture of most of the workshop.  Michael, center, has a show at Arcadia Gallery. 

One evening we went to the Broadway show Jersey Boys.  The show, recommended by blogger friend Carol Schiff, was wonderful.  I lived in New Jersey from 1964 - 1970 so I knew every song they sang!

Michael Klein's Painting Workshop Day 2

On the 2nd day of Michael Klein's workshop, we watched him demo for about 2 hours and then either started on a new still life, or worked on an individual flower.  I chose to work on the yellow rose on the left.  During the lunch break, the still life fell over, so I restarted and worked on the rose on the right.  It ended up being a lucky fall, as I learned from restarting.  Michael completes an entire flower, then moves on to another entire flower, throughout the still life.  That way, he doesn't have to worry about a flower wilting.  I usually paint all my darks throughout the whole canvas, then go to lights, always working through the whole canvas.  I do have to worry about flowers wilting, they don't last, so I find myself painting quickly.  Michael paints slowly.   Like Richard Schmid, he doesn't repaint an area, or make lots of color passes. He studies the color, and puts it down once.  This really got me thinking...am I wasting time, paint, energy.

Several of you asked to see my sister's painting; this is her piece from Day 1.  My sister, Natalie Italiano, is an instructor at Studio Incamminati in Philadelpia.

 This is a very small corner of the cast studio at Grand Central Academy.   They have an amazing collection of casts which are used by the full time students.

After class we went to Vasari Classic Oil Color store and distribution center.  Here's Gale showing us how some of their classic paints can be mixed.  It was so great to see this.  I treated myself to some Sap Green, as green was their featured color on sale this month.

Live Oak

8" x 10" oil on gessoed masonite
$195.00 + $10. s/h
please contact me if interested

Until my recent trip to Texas, I didn't know what a "live oak" was.  I follow the blogs of several artists from Austin and often see these gorgeous trees in their paintings.  What I didn't realize was that these gorgeous trees always have leaves, thus the name "live" oak.  In Colorado we have scrub oaks, short, thin, "scrubby" looking trees which lose their leaves in the fall (creating great fall colors, but not great winter paintings.)  A live oak drops leaves individually as new leaves push their way out, this was explained to me by Laurel Daniel's husband.

Anyway, for this piece I combined what I learned in Laurel's workshop with how I paint.  I think that's one of the benefits of workshops, combining what you learn w/ what already works for you.  So, I started this piece with a value understudy in the tree and land area, but not under the sky.  Then, I used my normal palette, not the limited palette from the workshop.  And, I went back to cleaning my brushes regularly, not using lots of brushes.  I'm happy with the results, and have several more live oak paintings to post!

And, if you are like me and not from Texas so you didn't know what "hill country" was....look at that hill on the left side of the land!

Another Austin Workshop Piece

12" x 16" oil on stretched canvas

$395.00 + $10. s/h

please contact me if interested

This is another piece from Laurel Daniel's workshop.  This piece started with a line and mass block-in.  Laurel gave us a great hand-out which explained this time honored, classic approach.

For the block-in you are to spread the pigments thinly, scumble and scrub in.  In the top practice, I had my pigment too thick, and mixed it w/ too much linseed oil, so I tried again.  In the bottom practice I started to get it.  Laurel uses a neutral mix of alizaron, french ultramarine and raw umber.  She uses this for her starts, as well as for a mixture throughout the painting.  Todays mix appears blacker than the one I showed you on my last post.  This just shows the lines, not masses, blocked in.

Here's Laurel demonstrating.  She was so prepared.  She had several samples (on the left wall) to show us step by step how to do different starts.

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.

Weekend With The Masters 2

This morning I attended a demo by David Leffel as part of the Weedend With The Masters, sponsored by American Artist Magazine, at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center. David has so much knowledge and so many years experience of painting and sharing that it's amazing. I have read the book "Oil Painting Secrets From A Master" by Linda Cateura but listening to him speak and watching him do even a short demo was wonderful. As the workshop title says, he truly is a master.

Some of his points were:
-everyone paints the way they do because of the way they think. if you want to get better, change the way you think.
-"essentially, I paint light and shadow"
-a painting always has movement, irregardless of the subject matter
-it is better to be definately wrong, than tentatively right
-Edges: an open edge continues, a hard edge stops. Alternate your edges: hard, soft, hard, soft.
Of course, there was so much more.

Studio Incamminati Workshop Day 5 -- Last Day

This is our class from the Studio Incamminati workshop, Color Study: Still Life and Figure Painting for Art Educators, taught by Natalie Italiano. Teachers came from Utah, Colorado (me!) & Ohio, as well as locally NJ and Pa. There are lots of workshops offered here. It's a pretty amazing atelier with incredible facilities.

Again, we had a critique after the 2 days of figure studies.

Here I am w/ my studies from the last day...seems to be a little glare on the paintings.

It was a great week. Tomorrow I'm off to the Jersey shore. I'm looking forward to that, as we don't have beaches in Colorado.

Studio Incamminati Workshop Day 4

Today in the Studio Incamminati workshop, Color Study: Still Life and Figure Painting for Art Educators, taught by Natalie Italiano, we continued to learn to see color by looking at color relationships, but with a model. Here Natalie is starting the study with a grisaille drawing.

In this photo she's blocked in the first four color notes: the brightest, easiest to see notes.

Here's her color study almost completed.

These are the 4 color studies I completed today. Studio Incamminati has an extensive palette which is listed on their website under supplies. Many of these colors are not in my normal palette and it's really exciting to use them!

Studio Incamminati Workshop Day 3

Today in the Studio Incamminati workshop, Color Study: Still Life and Figure Painting for Art Educators, taught by Natalie Italiano, we continued to learn to see color by looking at color relationships. Each day the still life set-ups have gotten progressively more complex; today's had boxes and simple still life objects, which created many planes of light on color. In Natalie's demo above, she is emphasizing laying in the color masses in relationship to the surrounding masses.

This class is very organized, sequential and well thought out, as well as fun! Today we received handouts on the color philosophies of Henry Hensche, Nelson Shanks (the founder of Studio Incamminati) and Lois Griffel (a student of Hensche's).


These are the 3 color studies I completed today.

Workshop at Studio Incamminati

I am spending the week in Philadelphia taking a color workshop, Color Study: Still Life and Figure Painting for Art Educators, at Studio Incamminati. Color study is a way of learning to see and understand color as the effect of light on form. It was inspired by artist Henry Hensche, and shows us how to see beyond an object’s local color and to understand how light, whether naural or artificial, influences how we see color. Instructor Natalie Italiano (in the above photo) is explaining how to see and paint light and shadow masses as individual colors using painted boxes.

This is my first piece. We painted a simple grisaille of a box which included about 5-7 color notes/shapes. We then started by painting the most easily seen color, which is usually a color in light. In this case the top of the box (in my painting, the top is a little brighter/lighter, I don't usually photograph my paintings indoors.)

This is my 2nd piece. Again, I started w/ the top of the box, in my painting it is a little more violet than the photo indicates. I can see here, that I should have made the table cloth a little warmer. That's what tomorrow is for!