Friday, January 20, 2012

Two Workshops in Eastern Washington


In February I'll be teaching two workshops at Confluence Gallery in Twisp, WA. On Friday, 17th February, I'll do a session called "Sketch Your Pet" where we'll learn how to sketch our pets using pencil, pen and ink and a lighthearted watercolor wash. We'll work from photographs showing several different action poses.


Then I'll do a two day weekend workshop called "Fantastic Fur. Expressive Eyes. Paint a Portrait of Your Pet in Oils." We'll learn basic oil painting techniques including how to mix colors and control our brush work to paint fluffy and clumpy fur and to capture the shine in our pet's eyes. Please contact the folks at Confluence if you are interested in joining us.

I'm going to buy chains for my car to make sure I can get over the mountain pass!

Thursday, January 5, 2012

Teaching Landscapes


I taught some beginner landscape classes while I was in Jordan. Here we are using my laptop to look at pictures of date palms. Some of the women in the group like to work at a table while others are happy on the floor with me. Since meals are eaten on the floor everyone is comfortable sitting like this. No yoga mats required!




Not too bad for first try protoptypes! We'll keep working on our landscape painting when I go back in April. And eventually we'll be good enough to paint en plein air in the beautiful landscape surrounding the town.

Teaching Art in Jordan


The women's society building in Jordan where I teach art has been painted pink! You can't miss it.


We chose to work outside in the garden while we used oil paints. 

Here are the self portraits we painted.

We made out paintings into bags. The women in the project have been sewing for years and can turn a painting into a bag very quickly. For the lining of the bags we used our own naturally dyed cotton. We have been dyeing for years too, experimenting with local sources of colour - usually mud and iron based.






We looked at the work of the painter Mark Rothko for inspiration. Also the work of Helen Frankenthaler who sadly passed away the same week.