A Week of Painting ~ Part 1

Back in February I learned that one of my favorite artists, Marc Hanson, was going to be holding a workshop here in Colorado.  I quickly signed up and was blessed to get a spot in the class!  The workshop took place this past week!  For the first day of class, we focused on doing value studies, learning to see in terms of terms of black and white values.  These are the 4 that I did.


I choose this lovely spot for the first two studies.


Later in the afternoon, I painted from this view of Haystack Mountain.


Our day finished with a painting demo by Marc.  I think I learned as much from watching him paint as I did from the exercises we had done!


Day two was spent at Golden Ponds in Longmont.  Our assignment for the day was to paint the same scene four times.  The first was a three value black and white study.  The second was to add the half tones and highlights to the three value study ~ still in black and white.


For the third, we switched to working in color, but stayed with a three value study.  Then for the fourth, we once again added half tones and highlights.  I learned so much from this exercise and found myself thinking back to it throughout the rest of the week.


We had a little free painting time at the end of the day, so I turned around and painted this view of Twin Sisters.  I didn't get it finished, but was able to get enough information down that if I wanted, I could do a larger painting from this study.


On the third day, we headed a short ways up into the mountains to Buckingham Park.  Our assignment on this day was to think about concept, to focus our paintings on an idea or thought, rather than just randomly painting whatever we saw.  I loved the way that Left Hand Creek flowed around the bend through a tunnel of trees.  I tend to work small and these paintings are just 5"x7".  One of the things I'm learning is that I really need to be painting larger!


For this one, I loved the idea of following a path to a cabin in the woods.  In this case, the "cabin" is really an outhouse, but it has a great setting!


We finished the afternoon with a demonstration from Marc of pastel painting.


Pastels are a medium which I am completely unfamiliar with, so it was a treat to watch it come to life!


Here it is complete!  Just gorgeous!


The day wasn't quite over though!  We spent the evening in the town of Niwot, where we painted nocturnes!  Our light for painting came from the street lights and book lights clipped to our easels.  It's a real challenge painting in the dark armed only with a tiny light!  The colors all come out slightly different once seen in daylight!