We recently took at trip to the far north east reaches of Muskoka. Feels more like Haliburton, but you turn the other way. The group had the full gamut of experience. So I chose a simple 4 shape image to do a demonstration. It was early morning - well, not too early. I had one of the participants tell me what colour wash to start with. This gave them the comfort in knowing that there is no magic in that choice. It was a manganese violet. I decided that I would paint direct to keep the process simple. I used the violet to mass in the shapes in their relative values. The scene was right before me so it was easy to point out squinted features. The next step was to add local and light affected colour to the masses. All the edges were very soft at this point and no detail was even inferred. I then showed how to break up the masses with other equal valued tones. The unbalanced image received a few blobs to help rebalance. Finally a sharp edge and some hi lites and accents.
Doe Lake Demo, 10x12, Oil on Board
Everyone nodded and raced off to create their own paintings. Many had been used to painting one image for months and were quite enthused about the immediateness. All had some difficulty painting what was there as opposed to what they expected to be there. A few caught on to the idea of creating the scene and installing their design concept. The ever changing plein air gave everyone a challenge. Some tried a big brush and before the weekend was out , a few got the hang of it.
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