Thursday, January 15, 2009

Experimenting in a workshop



What a busy week. I attended the Life Drawing session sponsored by the Los Gatos Museum of Art on Tuesday afternoon. I want to work a bit more on one of the charcoal pieces and then I will post it to the blog.

I did more work on Open Studios, which brought to mind the experimental work I had done on design at Mike Bailey’s “Watercolor Beyond the Obvious” workshop. Mike has participants take a simple still life, changing the elements of design through 20 full sheet paintings over 10 weeks. We did all the work at home and each class was devoted to an hour’s lesson on a design element and then a critique of each person’s paintings. Part of the class emphasizes looking at the masters. Mike liked “Let’s do lunch,” done after studying some of Kandinsky's work. The second one is “My Matisse” which was painted on watercolor paper primed with acrylic mat medium.

This class is being offered again this year and there might be some openings remaining in the Tuesday class, which meets in the morning. Mike is a master instructor who also teaches at UC Santa Cruz. He is amazingly enthusiastic, and you are never bored! Mike has been featured in a number of art magazines. You can check out schedules on the watercolor society’s website: www.scvws.org. You can check out Mike's work by going to the blog link on the side panel.

3 comments:

Nancy Eaton said...

Mary, you are so lucky! I've been reading Mike's blog ever since I began painting. I remember seeing his blog on that subject. But, of course, since I live in Florida, I'll never be able to take one of his classes.

Mary Paquet said...

Nancy, Mike is terrific. I hope you do get a chance to work with Mike sometime. Perhaps if he does a shorter workshop -- one time I took a composition workshop from Mike that was 3 days over a weekend. Also, he's taking a group to Italy this year, but with the economy and family, that might not be on your radar right now :-). I went to Dordogne, France, with Mike in 2006 and there were some fabulous artists on that trip. What an experience. I will post a few things I did from his trip soon.

Unknown said...

Hi Mary! I love reading your blog and learning about all the classes and opportunities we have in the Bay Area. The paintings are the frosting on the cake! Delicious, yummy and beautiful frosting.