Workshop!

Well, it's been a busy month so far (thus no new posts), and I've just completed an amazing workshop with Jane Paul Angelhart on watercolor portraits.

I'm not a regular "workshopper" as some artists are. I've confined myself to about one per year for the last six years, and they've all been somewhat regional, so my workshop observations and experiences are limited. That said, I think this was the most amazing three days I've ever spent with a brush in hand.

Jane, I think, has really opened up some ideas for me. For this workshop, the approach to energetic glazing (my description) was directly related to portraiture, but I'm already thinking about how to inject the philosophy into other paintings.

Again, it was an amazing three days, and I want to thank Janet Lee Wright for making it all possible.

Finally finished

Well, he's finished. I'm sure there are all sorts of things I could do to tweak this or that, but to be honest, I'm getting tired of him (the painting, not Zack, of course). I've decided to call this a successful stepping stone and let him be. I'll do better the next time, I'm sure.

In a related topic, that next time may be sooner rather than later. Janet Wright, the teacher of the portrait class, contacted everyone in great excitement a few days ago because she was on the verge of landing Jane Paul Angelhart for a portrait workshop in Harrisonburg, Va. How this all came to be is a long story, but the short of it was that Janet needed to find 10 participants in just a few days to pull the workshop off.

So, I'll be taking the Angelhart workshop on May 20-22 somewhere on the campus of Eastern Mennonite University. It's only a little over an hour from here, so I'll drive back and forth. Hope to get even more advice, and maybe I can improve on my next painting of Zack. But I've got to work on one of little sister Avery first!