Another painting in progress and a demo

"Flute Practice"

16" x 15" watercolor
Arches 300 lb. hot press

Dick Cole demonstrates his approach to art
Santa Clara Valley Watercolor Society

This piece is granddaughter Kelly and Grandpa Bob playing the flute last summer when my son's family visited from Vermont. I've done a few other pieces of Kelly alone from the photo, but I really like this picture of the two of them. I took my drawing to Ted Nuttall's workshop and Ted suggested very tight cropping with Bob's flute and Kelly's dress sash being cut off by the frame. He said when you have two people, it's difficult not to have them pulled to either side of the page, weakening the composition. He noted that he really liked the connections I had with various shapes overlapping the music stand. He even suggested putting in a dining chair back visible in front of the players in the photo. A little daring and I'm not sure I am that daring -- we'll see.

I spent a lot of time on my freehand drawing. I had struggled so with Jamie's piece because the initial drawing was flawed that I knew I must get this right before putting brush to paper. I really worked to get the appropriate gesture for Bob -- I love the way he is standing with his right shoulder lower than the left and his left leg canted out a bit. Also, his head was thrust forward and slightly down.

Tuesday night I painted with my art group, so I got to finish the drawing and put the first transparent layers of paint on the piece. As you can guess, Bob and I have been very busy prepping for our East Coast tour on our tandem bicycle. I hope to do more on this painting in the next few days.

Sunday afternoon I took time to attend the Santa Clara Valley Watercolor demo given by Dick Cole who is teaching a workshop for us this week. Here you see Dick working on initial layers of his landscape. I had to leave before he worked his final magic. He brought many samples of work and they are just gorgeous -- he uses a full range of values and the results are fabulous. I noticed him featured in a photo along with Betsy Dillard Stroud, and other well-known artists in one of my art magazines, when they were all teaching at Yosemite. Like many artists, including Frank Webb, Dick made his living as an illustrator. The training produces some very good fine artists.

If you live in the San Jose, CA, area, remember that all the SCVWS demos are free and open to the public. You will find a list of events on the website. I will be leading this fine organization in 2012, and I hope to meet some of the people in my blog neighborhood at our many events.