Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Robert Johnson Workshop Thoughts - Still Life

I just returned from Robert Johnson's 5-day workshop at the Scottsdale Artists School. Our time was spent learning the importance of a strong, accurate drawing. Great emphasis was put on getting it right the first time. After watching a still life demo, we spent the afternoon on our own piece (pictured at right). My soft edges are dynamite, but I lost the accuracy of the flowers. I've always preferred a more painterly thick paint technique versus a realistic approach.










Before the start of Day 2, I went to the store and bought daisies. They were cute, but hard for me to paint without painting each pedal. I needed more variety and values in this painting. I used the same pot in the first two paintings. You can certainly notice an evolution of how I executed the pot on Day 2.



On Days 3 & 4, we worked on figures which will be a separate post. On Day 5 I bought more flowers before the workshop and was eager to tackle another still life. I was looking for a variety of colors and shapes in this composition and tried to be more creative with my arrangement than I was on Day 2. A common mistake artists make is putting too much thought in placing items in specific locations as it can look contrived. My goal was to create almost a haphazard approach in my final still life pictured below.






2 comments:

  1. Very interested in your progress. Watched all your YouTube demos and seriously considering your June workshop.
    FNR

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    1. Hi FNR. I'm glad you like the videos. Thanks for following my blog.

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