Friday, December 05, 2008

Bowman Class

Today I attended Richard Bowman's landscape painting class at ARTichokes, and it was everything I'd hoped for! (That's Richard above with his cloud demo.) Actually, I am not sure I had a particular idea of what I wanted the class to be like, but I knew I wanted it to be different than anything I usually do. It was!

We all started off watching and listening as Bowman explained and demonstrated how he mixes his palette and his thought process behind it. The picture above is my palette mixed up in a similar manner to the way he did his. Certainly different than any way I've worked before!

After that, Richard started a demo of a cloud on his own canvas before we sat down to our own work. I took this picture in the beginning stage of my own cloud. I felt like I was trying to paint with my left hand (I'm right handed) when using the palette knife, which is all we used the whole class. I also used many paper towels wiping off my knife and numerous times got paint on my hands. Don't worry, I didn't panic. At least not on the outside.

The above 'Cloud/Blob' thing is the result of my first go with the knife. I think this may have taken about an hour, and even though it is ultra-blob-like and not so much cloudy, I'm happy with the result because it was so much outside the box for me. Sometime towards the end I started to figure out how to use the knife. It was difficult for me to figure out how to spread the paint without laying down too much paint nor scraping through to the canvas.

Here's my attempt at a sunset done during the 2nd half of the class. I started off at the top intending to do the whole sky in a higher key with lower chroma, but then as I got lower in the painting I got darker and brighter. Now I wish I would've kept it lighter at the bottom or darker at the top, but oh well. I can always grab another canvas and give it another go, right?

Richard Bowman is an energetic teacher, very helpful and has a great sense of humor. I thoroughly enjoyed learning about knife landscape painting and it was a welcome break from my usual grind.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

OMG OMG OMG OMG!!!! Paint touched your skin!! I'm going to go out on a limb and say you still didn't get any on your clothing.

:)

FiberLAB said...

I like your clouds Lacey. I always wanted to learn how to paint with the palette knife, but alas, was never taught. Besides, I was a really bad painter. Sounds like you've been really busy. Glad your studio is working out for you. Let's try to get together sometime soon. I know Doug would love to see you all too. :-)

Anonymous said...

I think both things look fantastic, especially for it being a new technique for you!