August update

A neighbor lady passing by my scene

This summer has just been so busy. Many students new and returnees. Our move to a new place in San Miguel has certainly taken up a huge chunk of our time. Just our casa not the gallery.
Monday we painted plein air up on our new hill, painting our neighbors colorful houses and met some of our neighbors. Very nice folks.

And here's the completed painting "Looking up Cuesta de Loreto" 9 x 12" oil

Moi  in front of my painted scene on Loreto

Tom painting the scene  looking down Cuesta de Loreto

The people who walk this street daily are very spry!

A couple of kids curious about us painting their "hood", the funky soup Tee shirt was very cute as were both of them.

This older lady 80 yrs old and her daughter. Thought their house was" feo", ugly , til we came along and thought it was beautiful. What an abstract!- better in life then this photo.

Mary painting the colorful abstract house.

One of the neighbor girls, so sweet.

Here's her sister

And little brother-  all smiles.

Next week plein air on Sunday. We'll be in our neighborhood Cuesta de Loreto but we'll paint from the hillside overlooking Atascadero and the city. We'll meet at our place and walk from their.
 email me or phone for more details if you want to come. ( 9:30 am ) at 22 Cuesta de Loreto Int. #1- grey green colored house with off white trim , take a left at the corner of Cuesta de Loreto at #22 (orange house) the second house in from the corner is ours. Sorry our street has no name ( sin nombre)!  Happy painting everyone-  Donna

Summer Art Classes new schedule and Day 1 Tom's Demo for workshop

"La Entrada Posada Carmina"  watercolor - I've always loved this entrance way to a hotel on Cuna de Allende in San Miguel.....one of my favorites and the first time I've painted it.

Some changes to the summer art classes, we have now added Thurs. to the schedule.
Monday plein air location announced weekly meet on location at 9:30 am
Wednesday  - in the studio WATERCOLORS  - 10 til 1pm
Thursday - in the studio   OILS or ACRYLICS - 10 til  1pm
Friday  -in the studio    OILS or ACRYLICS   -  10 til 1pm
Happy painting.
Tom and I have been leading a plein air workshop this week and due to all the rain we've mostly been in the studio. Tomorrow we plan to be out on location. here's a few pics from Tom's demo.

Tom's demo 1st day with Dan and Mary

Dan and Mary watching intently

Here's the demo start . Painted on a mid grey acrylic ground. He started by filling in the light  shapes with white. The darks were then painted thinly into the mid grey areas, very effectively creating the 3 dimensional aspect of this piece.With this established value pattern you could then start concentrating on the color.
 

Walkway  Janitzio Is. Patzcuaro - here is the demo in color. It's almost finished. There are a couple figures in the center to be developed a little more. You can really see from the intial start how faithful the color is to the original values of the  under painting. This was a great demo to watch and everyone learned so much.
And HERE is the finished painting below. WOW!
"JANITIZIO VENDOR"  9 x 12" oil on panel

2013 JUNE art classes in tte studio

 Some of  my summer students at work in the studio this morning. Anya, Kathy and Emma. A very diverse group from abstract to traditional.

Here's Emma our young student's version of a Panamanian "Mola" She had fun with this one.Great color selection. This is Emma's 3rd summer visit for art classes with me.

 And coming up next week, San Miguel is again launching a First Fri. of the month Art Walk. It will begin on July 5th 4 to 9pm. Hope you can come by for a snack or refreshment and see what we've been doing.

Patzcuaro Market scene watercolour

Busy Market -Patzcuaro watercolor 12"  x 16"

                         I hope to do a bunch of these from our trip. So much fun. I haven't worked in   watercolor for a month so I was pleased I remembered a bit. I didn't want to get into a  lot of picky details just loose, with lots of runs.

                 
                            And as promised some hot surfin' dudes
       

View from our Hotel window in Sayulita...you might note the lack of screen. We were assured there were no mosquitos! Sure ! Lol. Temp about 98F humidity about 95%...There was a ceiling fan. :)

 This guy was a great surfer. He made it look so easy.

Just about to go down.

Beach side scene Sayulita

                         hasta luego  Donna  Don't forget classes start again next week.

2013 June Travels Adventures and summer Classes

I've been away travelling in parts of 

Mexcio, and seeing Patzcuaro again after an absence of 26 years! It's a beautiful city and one that needs to be painted en plein air! 

Colorful corner of the Market in Patzcuaro

Approaching Janitzio Is. on Lake Patzcuaro The fisherman put on quite a display with their butterfly nets, we thought they were actually fishing! Lol. But alas you can see them here approaching the boat for a different kind of fish!

Fellow passengers- the musicians and an Island resident. This woman and her family still spoke their Purpepecha language. As for the music, hmmm.. the drums were a bit heavy handed but the guitarist /singer was pretty good.They certainly had a captive audience!

Fellow passengers and musicians on the return trip to Patzcuaro.

Street snacks Patzcuaro

 

One of many great churches to paint in Patzcuaro

Caminando-  walking in town

Summer classes in June 2013

watercolors Wed. Jun 19th 10 am to 1 pm

Oils and Acrylics Fri. Jun 21st 10 am to 1 pm

All are welcome to join me in summer classes every week. I've got some wonderful new photos to work from and if you wish to do some plein air painting in San Miguel let me know.We may go out on Monday am.

It would be terrific to do a plein air painting trip to Patzcuaro, if you've never been it's a must see. Perhaps a late fall plein air trip ?? At that time the weather would be perfect. Let me know if you're interested in the idea. Happy painting meanwhile where ever you are spending this lovely summer. Donna

In Nanaimo - A Workshop with Carol Marine - May 2013

Okay a great leap for me, instead of teaching, I'm stepping back and taking a workshop. What fun! I now know I'm a perpetual student because I just loved it.

Carol Marine is an amazing artist,  great teacher, very funny and her demos are dynamite. What more can you want? Everyone loved it.We had a great group, about 18 of us, from all parts. One woman came from as far away as  Cape Breton in eastern Canada. Mostly though from Vancouver and the Island. I will add some scenes from the workshop and some of Carol's beautiful demos. They are lovely in their simplicity, great composition, color and minimal brushstrokes. All part of the course for the week. She emphasized squinting, squinting and more squinting to see values and colour. Some of the exercises were capturing the image with lesser brushstrokes from 20 down to 10. Challenging but it worked to start seeing things simply.

Here we are with only 1 guy among us. Carol is comfortably posed across us! Lucky she is light as a feather. I'm second from the right front row!

We started out with Carol's favourite apples the first day. On Day 2 orange slices. A white cup and a very tiny eggplant Day 3 . A beautiful smoky blown glass vase and scissors, Day 4. And finally a broken egg in a green glass dish on day 5. Everyone was spellbound with the demos but that didn't rule out many questions and much laughter. One common question asked, What colors did you mix for that color?? To which Carol would inevitably reply "Red, Yellow, blue and a bit of white! In other words almost all colors are degrees of grey.

Vase and scissors this is part of the demo and not quite finished here.

Last demo, an egg and a fork are under way.

Red, yellow, blue and a bit of white written on the back of this Tee 

This photo captures some of the enthusiasm Carol brings to her painting and teaching

Watching one of the daily demos. Some of my efforts below.

My apple studies- Upper left 20 brushstrokes, upper right 15, btm. left 10 strokes, and btm. right no limit. This teaches one to really observe subtle changes in color and value but simplify too.

 

Study in yellow 6 x 6"

Study of a cup and oranges- Day 2 - 6" x 6"

On our last day I tried the egg painting too. It was fun to paint the yolk . All in all it was a challenging week, but  it's good to put yourself into a new venue that helps you to stretch a bit and see things in a different light.  Still lots to learn about still life painting in this style. I'll continue to explore the possibilities.  I would highly recommend Carol's workshop if you get an opportunity to go.

And a final reminder from Carol, almost all mixed colors are greys - in various proportions of red, yellow, blue and maybe a bit of white , depending on the grey. 

Thanks also to the organizer of this great workshop, Mary Stewart in Nanaimo. She did a fabulous job of keeping it all running smoothly. She kept us in daily snacks, coffee and tea throughout the week and saw to it that everyone had everything they needed. Kudos Mary! 
 Happy painting everyone!  I'm back in San Miguel trying out some new still life ideas. It's challenging and I'm still working it through but will post a few things in a bit.  Donna

O Canada and Carol Marine Workshop in Nanaimo B.C. May 2013

Flying over Mt Baker in Washington heading for BC

City of Vancouver rising into view

 Vancouver blooming in May. It was amazing with everything flowering like crazy! You'll note the sunshine too!

The sunshine held for an amazing 11 days with only light rain on the last day.

Waterfront Vancouver- walking along the seawall where there are miles and miles of paths.

Okay time to get prepared for the workshop in Nanaimo with Carol Marine. here are my props I found in Sally Ann's .

A great collection of stuff. Next post  on to Nanaimo across the pond.