Sunday, March 27, 2011

New Hampshire Workshop

I drove up to New Hampshire on Friday afternoon and stayed with an artist friend I haven't seen in many years, Mary Jane Cross, who paints in oils. We had long conversations about art and she cooked me a delicious dinner and breakfast the next morning. Saturday morning I woke up to 11ยบ weather. Who would have thought it would be so cold at the end of March? Fortunately, at least the days are longer. I then drove to Keene where I taught a one-day colored pencil workshop for the Monadnock Area Artist Association. Fifteen students attended the workshop and it was a nice day. The range of expertise was from beginner to advanced, and several work in other mediums (pastel, watercolor, decorative painting) so colored pencil was somewhat new for them. I enjoyed it, I think they did also, and I'm honored that MAAA asked me to teach a workshop.

After talking about materials and having students do some practice exercises, I set out a variety of still life subjects for the students choose from for their drawings. The surface I chose to bring the students to work on was Rtistx board 300 for colored pencil. Here are some photos.

These two ladies chose a small grouping of shells to draw. Also shown is the apple drawing I had them practice on before starting.

Here Ellen is drawing the bottles in the upper left.
Liz chose a cluster of tomatoes (not pictured here) and started with a beautiful rendering of the stems and leaves.
Here are a few of the pieces and the practice exercises when we were setting them up for a final critique.

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