Spring Workshop!

Hi Everyone! Hope your new year is off to a grand start. We are busy making preparations for our annual spring workshop to be held March 27- April 2, 2015. This year promises to be better than ever - our new studio on the historic square of Clarksville is finished, our printmaking studio is ready to go, and as always our beautiful spring landscape is just steps away. Come enjoy acres of beautiful fields of lush spring grass, huge oaks, pines, hickories and elm starting to leaf out, and blooming dogwood and wild plum. Barn buildings, wildlife and farm animals complete the list of motifs available to paint. Plus, of course, our gorgeous sunsets and twilights!

Our spring workshop includes daily instructor demos, help at your easel, access to our 700+

volume art library and some fine hospitality and home cooking too!

This workshop is organized as a field to studio learning experience for painters of all levels. Our first few days in the field will include several instructor demos (both drawing and painting) and learning a diffferent way to collect reference for studio paintings which will reduce your dependence on photography and bring authenticity to your finished studio work.

During the last half of the workshop, we will work in our brand new beautifully equipped 4000 square foot studio, finishing paintings begun in the field, as well as starting new paintings and learning about indirect painting techniques like glazing, scumbling, velatura and transparent grisaille.

Come join us for an exciting week- one that is guaranteed to introduce you to new ideas and techniques for taking your work to the next level!Registration and information here. 

Want to hear what students have to say? Click here.

Questions? Please email me. Hope to see you this spring.  Happy Painting!

Deborah

Workshop demo completed

This little painting started as a demo in my recent workshop in Telluride. It will soon be headed to its new home in MA! Click for larger view.

Fallen

8 x 12

Here is the reference material I used. The drawing is one of several studies I did of the small blue spruce that seemed to be everywhere. The pen and ink drawing  (dip pen, sepia ink and wash) was done on location. The stream was actually about 10 feet to the right…but I moved it.

I started the painting during the workshop to demonstrate the technique I use in my underpaintings. It was completed later after I got home from my reference drawings and memory.

Colorado!

I am in Colorado on a two week sketching trip! The mountains are beautiful and the air is cool, but I still seem to find myself in the woods, whether it's an aspen grove or stands of huge ponderosa pines. Here are a few drawings. All are charcoal on toned paper.

Drawing Trees- Student Work

My Drawing & Painting Trees class is off to a great start! In this  class we have students from Alaska to France and all across the USA. I am really pleased with the work they are doing and also with the enthusiasm they are showing for drawing and for trees! Here are a few examples. Enjoy!

Carole Baker

Carole Baker

Jessie Cook

Jessie Cook

Jon Main

Jon Main

Jon Main

(copy of Asher B. Durand)

Lolly Shera

Lucy Durfee

Mallory Agerton

Mallory Agerton

Maria Glodt

(Copy of Wm. Trost Richards)

Beppy Deaton
(copy of Asher B Durand)

Field Sketching

The online class  Field Sketching for Landscape Painters begins March 8. Whether you are new to working outdoors or an experienced plein air painter, this course will get you ready for the spring and summer season!

Here is a description of the class. Join us!

Working from Nature and direct observation is the time honored way to learn how to paint landscapes. Unfortunately, many aspiring landscape painters miss the essential first step: learning to draw and sketch in the field. If you are unable to draw the landscape you will have a much more difficult time learning to paint it convincingly. Most classes and workshops jump into plein air painting without giving students any tools to make a success of their efforts. This course is designed to give you the tools to draw and sketch in the field with confidence, both improving your plein air paintings and leading to better, finished work in the studio.

Topics covered will include:

~drawing materials and techniques
~a history of field sketching and study of examples of 19th century field sketches (drawings, watercolors and oils)
~how to do close studies of elements in Nature, value studies and thumbnails sketches
~how to use field sketching to gather reference material for studio work (and reduce your dependence on the camera!).
~how to use field sketching to aid in working from memory and imagination

Not sure that an online class is right for you? Click here to read what students say!

Deer Stalking

We live in a very rural area and so seeing whitetail deer is a common occurrence, but this past fall we seemed to see more and more and closer to our property. In fact, the huge acorn crop of the big white oaks on our land attracted some regular visitors for several weeks.

The last week or so I have been out in the late afternoon looking for them in the woods across the road. We are surrounded by woods and fields and I have learned where they can be found around dusk. The other day I was lucky enough to be in just the right spot as four does came out of the woods.

How Can You Become a Poet?

REPLY TO THE QUESTION: “HOW CAN YOU BECOME A POET?”

take the leaf of a tree
trace its exact shape
the outside edges
and inner lines

memorize the way it is fastened to the twig
(and how the twig arches from the branch)
how it springs forth in April
how it is panoplied in July

by late August
crumple it in your hand
so that you smell its end-of-summer sadness

chew its woody stem

listen to its autumn rattle

watch it as it atomizes in the November air

then in winter
when there is no leaf left

invent one

~ Eve Merriam (1916-1992), American poet and playwright

Online Classes and Spring Workshop

I've just updated the schedule for online classes for the remainder of 2012 and for winter/spring 2013.  Due to a reschedule of classes this fall, I still have a couple of spots left in the Composing the Landscape Class which starts on November 16. You can get more information about all the classes and register here.

I am happy to say that my spring workshop scheduled for April 6-13, 2013 is about half full.  The Landscape Atelier is an eight day workshop designed to provide students with a start to finish methodology for creating luminous landscapes, based on observation of Nature, drawing and sketching in the field, design and composition, to underpainting, and indirect painting techniques in the studio. Information about this exciting workshop opportunity and registration is here.

Drawing & Painting Trees

Tree Study

Charcoal on Twinrocker paper

I have just a few spots open in my most popular online class Drawing & Painting Trees. Class begins on October 26 and you can register here.  Not sure if an online class is right for you? Check out student comments here.

Summer Pond

charcoal on Strathmore laid paper

Field Sketching

We are in week 2 of my online class Field Sketching for Landscape Painters. The idea for this class came from two of my students who expressed concerns about their drawing skills and the challenges of working outdoors. One of the things I have noticed over the many years I have painted plein air and taught plein air painting is that most students are not really ready to take on the rigors of outdoor work. Most do not have the drawing skills, but those who do, fair much better. That combined with my interest in 19th century landscape painters and their working methods, led me to design a course which would give students some basic skills in drawing the landscape as an important prerequisite to painting it.

Our text for the class is John Ruskin's The Elements of Drawing which was so influential for American landscape painters in the 19th century. Combining Ruskin's drawing exercises with other assignments, students are building drawing skills for creating form, understanding value, and learning to slow down to appreciate and understand Nature as artist/naturalists. Here is some of their work.

Caroline Simmill, Moray, Scotland

Ash tree- Ruskin exercise
Caroline Simmill

Brian McGurgan, Astoria, NY

Ruskin exercise
Bea Lancton, Fredericksburg, TX

Ruskin exercise
Jamie Kirkland, Santa Fe, NM

Ruskin exercise
Jamie Kirkland

Jan Delipsey, Dallas, TX

copy of Wm. Trost Ruchards drawing
Phoebe Chidester, Clearwater, FL

Ruskin exercise
Phoebe Chidester

Kathie Wheeler
Viroqua, WI


Sara Lubinski
Brownsville, MN

Student Drawings

My online class Drawing & Painting Trees started last Friday. I am so pleased with the work the group is doing, so I wanted to share some of it with blog readers. In the first week, we are studying the concept of taper-the diminution in size from trunk to limb to branch to twig, as well as using Ruskin's Elements of Drawing to do some drawing exercises. Although students are encouraged to work from life, I have also posted many examples of 19th century drawings so that students can also make copies, a time honored way of learning. Students are using pencils and charcoal. This is just a small sample of the many drawings the group has produced over the last six days.

Judy Warner, Harvard, MA

Judy Warner, Harvard, MA
A Ruskin exercise

Tom Peterson, Canton CT

Deb Mason, Fredericksburg, TX
copy of a Jervis McEntee drawing


Sandra Daunt, New Ross, Ireland

Jamie Kirkland, Santa Fe, NM
Ruskin exercise

Jan DeLipsey
Dallas, TX

Julie Davis, Austin, TX
Ruskin exercise

Chris Chisholm, Tyngboro, MA
Copy of William Trost Richards drawing

Phoebe Chidester
Clearwater, FL

Rose Tanner, Banff, Canada



Anne Marie Propst, NC
Concord, NC