Friday, November 2, 2018

Candy Day - one day art workshop

This past Monday I went to a one-day workshop in Talking Rock, GA at the Chateau Meichtry Vineyard and Winery, taught by Candy Crawford Day.  It was a great day.  Candy is good teacher, and I FINALLY understood about how to use a paintbrush to "measure" to get proportions right.  There were only four students in the class (or was it five?) and I was definitely not in the upper 3 or 4 as far as skill level.

The first part of the day, Candy did a demo using a model.  We were inside, and the model sat on the hearth with her black and white dog at her feet.  Candy did a great job.  After lunch we went outside, and the model sat on a rock wall - this time with the dog by her side.

Now, at this point, I STILL did not understand about how to get proportions right.  Candy showed me, but it didn't make sense to me.  I THOUGHT it made sense at the time, but it didn't work for me (because I was doing it wrong). But I tried. The model put on a hat because the sun was so hot.  My photo is dark - I think because my setup was in the shade, and the sun was so bright outside the shade.  So my proportions aren't right. And you will notice that I didn't even attempt the dog!  LOL! 


Before I left, I walked around looking at the other artists' paintings, and their's were SO much better.  As I drove home (almost 4 hours), I was mulling over the whole proportion thing - thinking about the painting above, thinking about the painting of Sophie on the beach - and Ron and Bradley hand-in-hand on the beach - and how all my figures are too short and stubby looking.  Then suddenly a lightbulb went off in my head and I understood what Candy had described - how using the paintbrush to measure would help me keep the proportions right.  So I'm anxious to try another figure soon and try out my paintbrush measuring skills.  

Meanwhile, my painting from this class will remain in my ever-growing "too bad to be seen" stack in my studio. :-) It's so bad, I don't want to even try to make it better - just start over on something else.

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