8/2/10

Day 1, Resolve and other Words Of Note


Today was an exciting and exhaustive day. Promising to post my take on the day, I'm getting this out late but much to journal about. (note: I'm a bit tired and may not make sense.) Albert is actually a really funny man by way of a dry sense of humor and sensibility. His depth on the pastel subject is from years of experimenting with pastel when the medium was just a blip on the art radar. It's funny to hear about his discovieries on what and how he sees things.

Here are a few snippets and words of wisdom from today:

A good painting has an inner glow all it's own.
We don't "finish" a painting...we resolve it.
Work from dark to light. (this is a hard one for me)
Get the proportion and placement down first. (plein air specific)
Use 2, maybe 3 colors of the same value for a spanse of sky. (or a shadow area) to create excitement.
Greens in the landscape can be modified by purples and mauves. (This was nice to hear.)
Landscapes are patterns...no blending allowed! Let the eyes do the blending.

He also talked a lot about "the touch", meaning that you can get different colors, or values from the pressure of a pastel. For example: Taking a light value pastel and just ever so lightly brush it onto the toned paper. It appears darker than when it is applied with a lot of pressure...

as in the peachy color on the right. See how it is feathered and with additional pressure the peach gets "lighter" in value? Albert stressed that you can get more values by using this technique with just one pastel. (meaning you can travel with less pastels and get the same results on location as you would with your entire collection of pastels.) The same goes true with a darker pastel too, but with a reverse effect, ie: the lighter you press, the lighter the value, and the harder you press will give you darker results. Hmmm,... I hope to see this in action tomorrow when he is at the easel.

After the lecture and lunch, we got down to business. Albert asked us to just do a painting, and photograph it in 30 minute stages. I'm posting just a few from my long 2.5 hour session.


I used a turpenoid underpainting, pulling out my favorite complementary colors for the intended colors.

Starting to block in and establish values. I am now noticing that I didn't work from dark to light. Augh!

Creating depth in the distance and varying the colors of the lawn and sky with near or same values.

I "resloved" by cropping the final image because the lower bottom became really distracting and didn't seem to help the piece any. I also am grappling with my rendition of the tree. Seems a bit like a green Q-tip on a fork!

Tomorrow morning I am supposed to go back to this site (first thing, early in the morning) and see it in another light. I'm out of energy, will hope to be back tomorrow with more!

11 Comments:

Blogger Celeste Bergin said...

ahhhhh but I definitely see the glow! Anxious to see what happens tomorrow!

8/2/10, 11:52 PM  
Blogger Celeste Bergin said...

ahhhhh but I definitely see the glow! Anxious to see what happens tomorrow!

8/2/10, 11:52 PM  
Blogger Carolyn Jean Thompson said...

Thank you for sharing your workshop experience! I haven't taken a workshop from A. H. and would like to someday. It is great to hear about his tips.

8/3/10, 6:49 AM  
Blogger Casey Klahn said...

I just added your blog to the thumb roll at Pastel - http://pastelsblog.blogspot.com/
so we can all watch your reports of this workshop. Thanks for posting, Brenda!

8/3/10, 8:04 AM  
Blogger Katherine van Schoonhoven said...

Brenda! Albert Handell?!! What an honor to work with a master. Great first day report and result. You know you're learning when you're out of energy at the end of the day! Good work. I look forward to seeing more.

8/3/10, 4:15 PM  
Blogger Brenda Boylan said...

Thanks Casey! I'm glad my blog made the grade! :)
Yours, of course, has it's place on my blogroll too!

8/3/10, 10:27 PM  
Blogger Brenda Boylan said...

Hi Katherine!
Thanks for your comments.
Yes, I'm pooped out for sure!
I just got home again and am answering yesterdays comments (it's now Tuesday) and I'm preparing for todays post! You would be LOVING this workshop because of all the familiar faces from the Northwest area! Maybe next time?

8/3/10, 10:33 PM  
Blogger Amanda Makepeace said...

I love this workshop you are taking! I've added it to the EBSQ Friday Five.

8/6/10, 4:19 AM  
Blogger Jala Pfaff said...

"Green Q-Tip on a Fork"--hahahaha.
The work all looks great, and thank for sharing your workshop experience.

8/6/10, 5:43 PM  
Anonymous Robert Sloan said...

This is great! Thank you for sharing your workshop experience. I agree with your crop of the workshopped painting - it looks much better as a square painting with the bottom lopped off. I hope you keep and frame this with the crop, it's lovely.

If you cut a large mat, you can crop it without cutting the painting so that if you changed your mind about the foreground you could get it back. I usually crop by changing the shape of the hole in the mat.

8/12/10, 10:55 AM  
Blogger KEH said...

thank you sooooo much for posting all this great information about your workshop with Handell. I can't thank you enough!! I've never had the opportunity to go to a workshop - but I honestly felt like I attended half of it after reading all your posts! Thanks again for sharing the art info and great artwork!

12/5/10, 1:14 AM  

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