Plein air workshop in CO

Marc Hanson's plein air painting workshop! (That link takes you to his blog.)

I feel so lucky to be a participant in this week-long plein air workshop - taking place in Longmont, Colorado. 

They had been having some rainy weather but today the sun was out and it was beautiful. Locals are talking about how green everything is. We have noticed there are an abundant amount of sweet peonies!

Day 1

Here is Marc speaking about Cobra Water Miscible oil paints.

The easel he has tipped up to show the paints is a Coulter Easel, made by James Coulter.

It looks like it is a very simple design, quick to set up and handle. Marc painted on that mid-sized one today when he demo'ed for us.

We painted on private property that included this pond (some people called it a lake), with lovely scenery all around us.

The demo above shows Marc's value painting and then how it looks when you add the color notes, 

all the while trying to keep the same value scale as you work with color.

This is the scene that he viewed as his concept.

 Next we were to try it!

 I picked this tree with pond behind.

My value painting with a toned ground of red oxide and walnut alkyd.

 I err'd right off the bat because I put the tree over on the right side with no space around the tree. 

It did feel strange as I was doing it, but at the time I didn't know what to do.

   

The next exercise was to add some color, but trying to stay within the values that you saw before. 

As you see, I moved the tree out  from the edge of the paper, but I worried about putting in the foliage for the tree, 

so Marc showed me how to carve out the shapes of the groups (he called them pods) of leaves. And it worked! Not sure why I was so stuck ... I have painted leaves before. I think it is just this new situation I am in! Anyway, he did come to the rescue.

Tomorrow we will have a lesson in color.

My friend Barbara (Be) painting away.

I hope I will be able to post like this every day. We will see how it goes ... if I take enough photos and if I don't become too exhausted to post - it is almost midnight!

Thanks so much for checking in!