Workshop Sketches

A two day Gouache & Watercolor workshop with Eric Tiemens in Mendocino California, what a treat. This was one of the sketches I did on the first day. Eric sent the students out to gather information in the form of a sketch. Being in the town of Mendocino it was not hard to find great views of ocean cliffs or an old historic town all right there as soon as you walk out the door. Seeing that I live in Sacramento and do not see the ocean much I decided to try it out.

Back in the class room I did a little color sketch from memory. Eric did a ton of demos and taught us about composition and even gave a little history lecture on Artists. He had the biggest collection of art books I had ever seen. Pretty nice of him to have lugged all those books for us to see.




On the second day of the workshop I went back out to gather some more info and it was raining so the cliffs edge was pretty windy. So I sat in my truck and caught a foggy seen of the landscape.
Back in the class, more great demos showing us that we control the lighting in the seen. Make it a night seen or just before dusk, play with the color and lighting in little sketches, do not just stick with the first thing you do. Well this was a big learning curve because not anyone can just make this stuff up, it takes years of being out there and studying the landscape and lighting conditions.
Well this was an advanced class, so I did many other sketches that I did not include, he had us do warm ups and just play with the medium and different papers.
In the end we where to work up a more finished sketch and this is were I fell a little short. I dropped my first cliff drawing and decided to do the landscape instead. It was mainly because of the focal point was not totally resolved in my head. Was the focal point to be on the cave I first intended or the crashing waves to the left as it appears in the color study. So I figured that I could deal with this stuff back at home. The landscape was fun and simple to do, but I did not get wild and make bold moves, I stayed in my safe zone. This was where I fell short, and should have dove in and did not. Well I still liked my little landscape painting and the next step would be to use it as a starting point for a larger oil painting. And now that I am back at home I can create the cliff painting, and explore more.