Day 21 - A Spoonful of Slices

Carol Marine Workshop - Day 2

The beginning stages of Carol's demo

On Day 2 we got to watch Carol paint a beautiful demo with orange slices (the grapefruit colored variety).   You can see the early stages in the photo above.   Unfortunately there is a glare, but you can still see the luscious colors on the slices and the process Carol uses of painting over the lines, which ultimately helps create nicer edges!

We learned some of the tricks that can be used for creating ellipses, 

 I took these notes.   Carol draws around the boundaries of an object - top, bottom, left and right -  (and it helps to have her panel-holder when you draw a cup like the one above so that you can draw it off the canvas panel).  For the cup we measured the side (the shorter measurement) to see how many times it went into the opening.     Drawing the cross helps to make sure the ellipse is equal on all sides. 

Here's a link to a great explanation of all things ellipses by Mike Sibley.

We also talked about the importance of putting the paint down and leaving it alone instead of fuzzing with it.  And as someone in our group pointed out:

 "Painting is like Golf, the fewer strokes the better."

Another expression for "fuzzing with it"that I loved; one that Carol's artist friend coined was, 

"licking the canvas".  Something I always need to remember not to do:-)

Instead:

be conservative with your strokes

plan it 

and leave it alone.

We also focused on values this day and did 3 samples of compositions all with a different value combination.

2 of my 3 are below:

 Medium value dominant, light value secondary and dark value as "the smidge".

Dark value dominant, medium value second and light value is the smidge in this one.

We also did an exercise on edges and then in the afternoon we painted a set-up of our own.

Can you tell that each day is jam-packed with great learning opportunities?

A Spoonful of Slices

Oil on Gesooboard

DPW