Day 2, Pastel Workshop

Are you amazed that I am posting again today? We worked hard again and are all tired out!

A reminder that the workshop is with Desmond O'Hagan. He is trying hard to get us all loosened up in our strokes and manner of painting. We did exercises in making sketches of our subject in only two values, black and white and then one in three values before beginning to paint. That took me a long time and I did not come close to finishing the painting. It couldn't be that I picked a very difficult photo to start with, could it?

I don't have the reference photo with me, only the printed copy and it is at the art center. It is a diner in Albuquerque. Red and turquoise with chrome bar stools and black and white tile, etc. I simplified it as much as I could. I forgot to take a photo of the sketches, sorry, they were better than this start on the painting. I also don't have anything with me to straighten the photos or fix them to look better. I am pretty sure I have a good idea now in how to proceed with it and end up with a good painting. We will find out.

Diner, start, 9 x 12 inches

Desmond working on his demo and a view of the screen. It is nice that you can see what he is doing without all crowding around him. The Windberg Art Center is wonderful with the latest equipment. It is a little ways from Georgetown, so they have a nice kitchen, lunch area, bathrooms, easels for each artist with a table, paper towels and chair/stool. They sell art supplies and their own pastel paper, which I will buy and try.


Desmond working on the demo for today. Very nice painting of cars on a city street.

I'm Here and Painting Pastels!

I have not abandoned my blog. Susan Carlin and I are at an Austin Pastel Society sponsored workshop with Desmond O'Hagan in Georgetown, Texas. Regina came up for the Thursday demo night and we have had a great time.

Desmond paints with an almost abstract style that uses shapes and light to define his subjects. A new way for me to work, but I will learn from this and am sure it will help my more detailed paintings be more dramatic.

To learn we started with instruction only and he did his demo after we painted, so hopefully todays painting will be better. I didn't finish this, but it is a start. The guy on the left looks a little off balance for sure.

Lineup
approximately 10 x 13 inches, Canson paper, gray

It was a different experience as I rarely use Canson paper any more. I may try a sanded paper today. His technique though requires a heavy hand and then lift to get variation in the strokes like painting.

Desmond showing us how it is done. What a great art center, more about that next time.

Sunflowers in Pastel, Baseball Note

I am so behind in posting and reading blogs. Wow. I was exhausted when Sue left and tomorrow I go to Georgetown for a workshop sponsored by the Austin Pastel Society with Desmond O'Hagan. It should be great. I have been preparing for this and resting from the marathon of painting with Sue and not posting.

Sue and I painted at McKinney Falls on the Monday after she arrived. On Tuesday we went to Regina's wonderful studio and we all painted sunflowers. You can see Regina's sunflowers on her blog.

It is always fun to see the different takes on the same subject by different artists. Sue sketches all the time and has fine tuned her drawing skills and does perspective without thinking about it. Regina was a drafter, so she sees lines very well. I struggle with perspective, as you know, so I decided to skip the dramatic shadows, lack of energy. I will partly blame the angle I was working from. The shadows were almost straight on to my view which is not great for showing the shadows and lines. I didn't want to struggle, I just wanted to paint and have fun.

These are my sunflowers. We worked on Colourfix pastel card, 9 x 12 inches. I will develop this just a little more to help the composition. I will run the bouquet out of the painting on the left and maybe darken the background a little. I will post the final one of these days.

These are Sue's with the dramatic shadows and window. The light was so great and interesting shapes were all around. Any painting is better if you have interesting negative space. Those are the shapes around the object and in between. Variety makes interest.

Wednesday we painted in the area, Thursday near Lake Travis in Austin and Friday near here. I will post about those days soon and show you the results.

Of course we had a little baseball in there as well. The Longhorns have played 10 games now and are undefeated. You can keep up to date on Joanna's blog. She has colorful reviews whether she is there in person or not! We went to San Marcos last night and watched them at the opening of the Bobcats' new stadium. A very nice evening and visited with Larry after the game. The Longhorns travel to Stanford this weekend. I will be learning and painting so I won't get to listen to the games, well maybe a little on Friday evening. Hook 'em!

All OK at Our House

We got up early on Saturday and took Sue to the airport. Later we went in to Austin to the UT baseball games. After the games we went to dinner with our daughters and headed home. As we approached our turn off we could see flashing lights. We thought it was a wreck but it was a huge fire. They let us turn down our road and come home. Highway 71 was closed between Bastrop and Smithville. We did not have any smoke in our area. The winds were so high that the smoke blew straight south, it could be seen on the radar all the way to the gulf. Very bad. It was fortunate that no one was seriously injured. Homes and businesses were destroyed and there was loss of livestock and wildlife.

A downed power line started the wildfire and it is still not contained completely. Hopefully the wind will not be too bad tomorrow and it will burn out.

The Alum Creek Center

You can read one of the first stories here and todays news here. It is strange how fires skip some things and burn others.

The fire is about 5 miles from here on the road, but closer as the crow flies. We had several calls today from friends and family that saw the fire on the news, so I thought you might be curious as well. Thankfully all is well here tonight. It is awful for the displaced families and businesses.