Betsy Dillard Stroud Workshop

"The Three Muses"

22" x 30"

In progress

It's been a super busy week with coordinating Betsy's workshop. Betsy is so creative and such a free spirit. I've taken her to dinner a couple times and we've had some fascinating conversations.

Next week I will catch up with my blog friends and write more about the workshop. For Betsy, painting is all about making your personal marks on the paper. In the 90s she modernized her approach by making very complex backgrounds and mixing realism and abstraction. Her demo Sunday was fascinating. She started with a "brush painting" - no image drawn on the paper and no plan. Consulting with the group on what they wanted to see, she did a large floral with a small figure. She first sculpted a beautiful floral arrangement, then she started adding tape to the paper, creating divisions and random shapes to paint around. She added the top of a Freido Kahlo type woman in an abstract manner in one section and began applying beautiful combinations of about 5 transparent colors to the background. When she removes the tape, she paints into those areas.

For the first three days of the workshop, we are having a model. Christina returned. If you click the link on her name, you will see a previous painting I did and entered into a show. Christina is a wonderful model who can twist herself into the most interesting poses and hold them without a flicker. We had a bonus with one of our SCVWS members, Jane Ferguson, offered to pose without charge one afternoon.

Betsy begins with warmups, 2 minutes and five minutes, and no erasing is allowed. That's true even on our finished paintings. She said the artists marks and corrections add interest, so the piece I've shown has no erasures. This is the piece I started on Day 1. Betsy had Christina take three different poses and we drew all three on our full sheet watercolor paper. Then we followed the process of applying tape. We were to do a dark, mid-tone, and light value on the three poses. When this piece is done, there will be no white showing. Betsy told me she likes this piece very much and I made good divisions of space. Be sure to carry the Scarlet Lake and the purple into all parts of the painting. I am really liking this painting.

The second day, Christina was back and Jane joined us. We did lots of warmups and then drew Christina in a prone position on paper coated with mat medium. I haven't had time to work on that one yet. I also have a great drawing on watercolor paper of Jane in very colorful clothes. Jane is a very accomplished artist and wears such unique and beautiful clothing. She says she is the original "Second-Hand Rose."

I hope to describe soon the process I learned for making stamps.