I Went Back To School!!

"Orchard I," 8"x10", acrylics on museum quality panel, a study created plein air while shivering majorly at Millers Big Red Cider Mill this past weekend. I don't do cold, but I ventured into the chilly great wilds this weekend for the opportunity to paint plein air with one of my mentors. You can snag this painting for $200 if you are the first one saying please.

I HEARD A PLEASE, so this one's SOLD! THANK YOU!

I got to paint with none other than Vianna Szabo this weekend! I was part of her landscape painting workshop. She took 8 of us on a whirlwind immersion to the joys - and realities - of painting plein air.

The first day we focused on composing and editing the landscape. Plied with donuts and warm cider, we then ventured into a wet and cold orchard to create value studies that solidified (or should have) our concepts.

My first ah-ha moment came while working on my color study. I was tracking my brushstrokes on a value scale (I thought to better understand the realm of greens seen). Then I discovered how much of my color fell smack into that "3" of the middle value range.

So what does this mean? My initial thought is that I'm allowing myself to be distracted by color, and not fully using value, and this could be why I sometimes struggle with building great depth.

Vianna recommended I study some masterpieces and reduce them to 5, 3 and 2 values each. I was too exhausted to tackle this challenge right away, but I do think this will be eye opening, and an exercise to try later this week. From the warmth of my own studio!!

Tomorrow I'll share what we learned on Day Two!

Thanks, as always, for following along with my artwork,

Kim

PS Lots of photos from the weekend are here.

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