For the longest time, I have been a huge fan of Pat Dews. Way back when I first started painting, I got of one of her books, and she quickly became one of my first art "heroes". Pat works in mixed media. Watercolor, ink, acrylics and collage. The supply list for this class was 2 pages long. We worked full sheet for all paintings (22"x30"), so even the paper took up a lot of space. Here is a photo of all the art supplies I took with me for the trip.
The following are photos of work in progress and painting "starts". We started a lot of paintings. I didn't finish most of them. This first one was created with acrylic inks.
This next painting below is what Pat calls an "altered surface". It was started from a failed painting I had kicking around from about 7 years ago. Previously, I would have chopped the painting up and made cards out of it. Pat showed us new ways to salvage lousy paintings and turn them into something new and interesting. The original painting shows through most readily in the grey patches. The original was bright orange and turquoise. I washed over it with some grey to tone it down a little before laying out a new design on top of it. It is interesting that a painting is more visually interesting and complex when it has some kind of under-painting, even if very little of it is obvious at the end. This is the magic of the "altered surface" (building a painting on top of an old one) rather than using a new sheet of paper. This one is well on its way, but still needs some work.
Painting below created with acrylic ink. There are things about it I really like, but it's not finished. Part of me likes the off balanced look of it, but hmmm...it really needs to have colors worked through from left to right and that big open space on the lower left really shouldn't stay that way.
This painting start was done with acrylics, and white spaces preserved by laying down collage pieces, which were painted over, and then removed.
Below is the finished painting from the painting start above. Inspired by one of the photos Pat brought with her, taken at a shipyard.
Here we all are at the end of a very busy week. Some amazing talent in this room! Most of the students were fairly local. Two ladies traveled all the way from Canada for this class. Pat is right there, front and center in the bright pink (paint covered) shirt. She is a fantastic teacher, and I highly recommend her workshops!
