Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Matt Smith Workshop- Day One



The first day of Matt's workshop consisted of morning lecture as he talked about values, color, shapes and trying to create excitement on the canvas. He talked about color selections and told us the colors he uses in the field.

He did a very nice demo from a picture and he worked it like magic- made it look easy too- which fired me up for painting in the field that afternoon..

We ended up going to Lost Dog Trail with beautiful views all around and everyone started to work. Matt's only warning was "watch where you are walking and don't walk into the jumping cactus which will burrow into your feet and will be extremely difficult to get out."

I decided to walk back to the Cruiser to get my camara (why do I forget these things?) and I walked into some cactus. I spent some time trying to pull pieces of cactus out of my socks and then decided I better get to painting.

I was about halfway through the painting when Matt came around to see what I was up to. First of all, the cactus on the left side of the painting was really quite large and he said it overpowered my canvas so he cut it down to size. And then he said "Um, Sue" and I said "Yes Matt, " and he said "You put your cactus right in front of that mountain over there- and that mountain happens to be a landmark around here- it's called Camelback Mountain and important to people - you really shouldn't do that." Oops!

More tomorrow.......

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Mom, you are too cute...I could definitely see you saying this. Love you!