Monday, August 24, 2009

David Curtis Atelier-Day 1





The site for today was Halibut Point in Rockport, a quarry by the sea. The lesson was to start a 20x24 canvas which we will work on three days this week. The idea was to work on design, draw, paint thin, key the painting for about 5 p.m using only one of each, red, blue, yellow and white and do a block-in of three or four values. OK, plenty of time (5 hours). It was suggested to draw several times during the day to see which time of day gave you the best composition or placement of light and shadow. I started out slowly, thinking I have lots of time. Wouldn't you know it? By 3 p.m. big thunder clouds came overhead and it rained. There should be a cute French word for "painting in the rain" because it always happens! We packed up and went to the Rockport Art Assoc. classroom to continue for the day.

There are 6 in the class, Bill, Sandy, Susan, Connie, Claire and myself. Three of us had cameras. I didn't have that much accomplished and had to refer to my shot of the site. So every 2 minutes my camera shut off and I had to be continuously turning it on and finding my shot. Everyone seemed to have a good grasp of the lesson. At the end of the day, we were instructed to "stitch" all our edges to prepare for the next time we would work on it. This prevents ridges and makes the next layer work better. In the photo of my block-in, the upper left corner is stitched.

Tomorrow we do three 9x12's, one every 2 hours, working on colors and impressions rather than good design.

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