Workshop Weekend

It was a busy and stimulating weekend with
a workshop I organized for Eric Wallis

Eric is a fabulous artist from Logan, Utah
He was having an opening at the Phillips Gallery in
Las Cruces, NM. and the workshop was designed
for the members of the Guild to take advantage
of his expertise.

Here is the portrait demonstration he did on the first day.
May I introduce young Master Justice Bleiweiss.
He was a marvelous model, holding his saxophone
perfectly still.

A warm spotlight was used and
the shadow side was cool
from the florescent bulbs



A simple mass in of light and dark
patterns of the hat and face  were
placed with a thin wash.

 After blocking in the light and dark
areas, Eric concentrated on getting the
features in place. Starting with the
darker areas
He worked with slight value changes
being careful to keep everything in
the shadow side still in the overall
correct value.
Some of his oil color mixtures were
cad yellow/venetian red for warms
cad green light/venetian red for cools.
These were both modified with
some of the shirt and background colors already on the palette.
When he did the hands he talked about how it was important to
see the negative shapes between the fingers,
and on painting the sax it was useful to see the direction of the
individual shapes of both highlights and darks.

Today was the Landscape Class and 12 eager artists headed for
the beautiful area called Dripping Springs
It was a bright but hazy morning. Very rare here.

Here is the painting Eric did.
I used my phone to take this
shot and it doesn't show the
beautiful subtly of the
neutral colors and
correct value changes.

Eric quickly put in the basic shapes
following the same steps as he did
with the portrait.
The values changes were very close
 due to no sunshine and shadows.
I was amazed how he could quickly
grasp the complexity of the rock
formations and colors. Several of us
have painted this area quite a few
times and we still do not have it
down. Later, the sun came out
along with a tarantula on Lynda's hat!