Joe and I ventured off to the western part of North Carolina for a few days, into the beautiful Appalachian mountains, where I attended a mini-watercolor workshop "sampler" at Cheap Joe's Art Stuff. In other words, I had classes with several different instructors for just a portion of a day apiece. I sometimes forget just how beautiful North Carolina is, and these past few days were a good reminder of how gorgeous the mountains are.
Now, in all honesty, "realistic" painting is not what I'd like to learn the most. I gravitate more towards looser, freer styles, (and that wasn't the focus of these workshops) but I still enjoyed these classes immensely, and learned a great deal about all sorts of things. Several days beforehand, I dutifully sketched out the (above) image we were supposed to paint in class, and although most people had huge sheets of paper before them, I was more than happy with my 9" x 12" Canson block. (Large enough for me at this point--I can barely draw/paint, let alone draw/paint large!) Much later, I realized that that teapot is supposed to be much "taller" than I made it! That's the kind of thing I prefer not to have to worry about!
But let's just say that now, if called upon to do so, I can probably render silver in watercolors and make it look believable.
One of my instructors was Anne Abgott, who's written a book called Daring Color, and she's not kidding. She has a bold approach to painting with color, and mingles colors together on the page for a luminous effect that I liked a lot. After I met her, I realized I have her book at home! But since I tend to have hundreds of watercolor books, that shouldn't have surprised me in the least. Below is Anne's effective example of painting only the shadows of an image in a negative painting, as she demonstrates the way shadows tend to flow into one another.
Since our home was slated to have temps nearing 100 the past few days, it was heaven to near the mountains, even though the first day or so was rainy--soon enough, the clouds parted and the sun burst forth, with breezes and lush green color. And no mosquitoes!
Joe relaxed while I went off to classes, and then we went out to explore this pretty part of our state for a day or so. (I had read about the Moses Cone mansion, near Boone and Blowing Rock, which is now a Craft Center featuring beautiful artwork from neighboring states, and I'll tell you more about that in a later post. The Cones were a fascinating family I'd read about years ago, and you may know about them, but I'll tell you more about them soon!)
In the meantime, I am going to try to practice some of what I learned, and this workshop will give me more confidence for the one I'll be attending in Maine later in the summer."Life is a train of moods like a string of beads; and as we pass through them they prove to be many-colored lenses, which paint the world their own hue, and each shows us what lies in its own focus." (-Ralph Waldo Emerson.)
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