Weekend workshop

I haven't been posting lately because I haven't been painting. All my time has been occupied (when not at work) by preparing for a workshop I taught this weekend. Loads of fun and everyone seemed to have a good time. Here are some photos of the group and a photo of the 12 paintings at the end of two days of instruction. They can now finish them at home if they like. Some of these people had never painted anything before!

Workshop painting finished

In the last step I softened the edges of the masked highlights, added more darks and more colour to the oranges, added a few more shadows on the cherries, darkened some of the shadows on the table, and finished the fine lines on details. I don't want to add any more steps because the students in my workshop have to be able to paint this over two days and I want them to have fun doing it.

step 6

For the next step it was just more of the same. More glazes of colour on the fruit and darker shadows. I have also removed the masking fluid from the fruit but haven't softened the edges of the highlights yet.

step 5

In the next step I added a wash of reds on the cherries, washes of both shadow colours and orange to the oranges, and softened a lot of hard lines.

step 4

I added another wash of darks on the lid and started picking out little reflections that give the illusion of reflective metal. I took off the masking fluid on the lid as well. I then added darks on the cherries in the glass. I started adding washes of colour in the metal bowl as well as the metal around the glass.

workshop painting step 3

I started laying in the first colourful washes and darkened some of the background values.

for workshop - combined step 1 and 2

I am going to be teaching a workshop in a couple of weeks so I have to paint the project and write up step-by-step instructions for the class as handouts. I am doing a simplified version of the painting I have been working on. So, here is a combined step 1 (the drawing) and step 2 (the first background washes). I'm surprised at how fast this is going since it is so small (about 8x10). This was just about 20 minutes of painting (once the drawing and masking was done).