NORA KASTEN Artist Oil Painting "Roses & Black Grapes" / THE JOURNEY, Day 22

"Roses & Black Grapes"

© Nora Kasten

Oil painting on linen  (12" x 12")  From the archives  SOLD

"Day 22 of The Journey and the first day of Sherrie McGraw's workshop here in Bennington, Vermont.  I am so glad to be here and actually painting.  I don't know why I had to endure Stape's workshop but it was worth it to be here now with Sherrie, a master painter and teacher.  

I took one liner notes this morning while she was teaching and painting her demo.  She will be painting on it again tomorrow morning.  Half of the class painted still lifes in the afternoon after  setting up his or her own still life personally with what they wanted.  The other half painted portraits from a live model.  It was a man with a big funny black hat.  


I'm printing out my notes here on the blog and must do it now because I won't be able to read them when they cool off.  I'll load the photos that I took today too."

Day One of Nora's Painting

 Nora's Still Life Setup

 Student and Sherrie McGraw

 How I Saw Sherrie Painting

 Day One For Sherrie McGraw's Painting

 Sherrie McGraw's Still Life Setup

Nora's Notes From Sherrie McGraw Art Workshop in Bennington, Vermont 

I counted 16 students in the class this Monday morning, October 11, 2010

No student grade paints.  They are diluted

She prefers long bristle filbert brushes

Drawing is a language and Painting is a language - they're not the same

Step back to view a painting

Poster shapes are easily seen from a distance

Warm and cool to show form and to be read from a distance

We will be learning to do setups, concepts, visual ideas, etc.

Setup is important.  What is your intent of the work and why.  Eye level to the setup is important

Objects on surface to take eye into the painting

Linier drawing is not the language of painting - start with a mass

If you start with a drawing, it immediately robs you of the beauty of the painting

If a painting isn't going well, we've lost our vision and are putting things out of relationship

Rembrandt's self portrait's concept was dark to light and dull color to more color.  

Rembrandt did it beautifully.  Paint our paintings to be beautiful

Starting with broad mass instead of line drawing gives us the opportunity to make changes easy

Some ideas demand a large canvas while others, small is best

She did not commit to color right away but used burnt umber to mass in

We can generally tolerate more space on the left rather than right side.  Listen to inner voice

This is true for still life but not portrait painting

Setting the special relationships, starting with the darks

Wednesday afternoon we're all going to the Clark Museum

Light has a cool opaque quality.  Dark has a transparent quality

We use pigment and oil to mimic life

Sherrie has preference for more dramatic light

Learn the universal things that happen and how painting works

If you want something different in your painting, take more time to work into it

If you rush into it, you'll end up with what you've always done before

When you hold the paint brush close to the ferral, you're drawing and not painting

Always make your brush strokes begin and end, start and finish

Get your shadows in, form shadows and cast shadows

Cast shadows make objects sit on the surface

Shadows are really the foundation of your painting

Paint thinking = how can I do it with brush strokes

Make object (metal) as dark as it is and then put in lighter reflected lights and highlights

If you put darks into it you are poking holes and the value is lost

When things look complicated, just look at it and figure out the problem visually-not verbally

Always think in terms of the finished painting.  Wants it to look gorgeous right away

No steps or stages / It's alright to put a highlight in early

Art is not a 9 to 5 job for Sherrie.  She loves making art and all that goes with it

The important thing is to be your own motivator 

The flatter you paint leaves the better.  Do they function as lights, darks, etc. / Modify them

She's placing color notes, more paint, crisper edges, thicker paint

She sometimes does a preliminary sketch, especially for a large painting but certainly not always

Using the palette knife, sort of scraping to get the nice quality of the brass pot

Finishing a painting in front of a class would be impossible

Is going to paint on the same painting tomorrow morning

Says she's still feeling her way into the painting

Our eye moves from dull to bright, dark to light, less color to more color

True colorists can use less and make it look like more

Sherrie is writing a book on concept

Her first thought is to produce the beauty she sees, not center of interest

You need a wet background to make edges go in and out.

Keep your shapes so they will read from a distance

Makes her decisions on how far to finish a painting (and what a finish is) as she goes along

A natural vignette (unfinished background) happens because you're tending to what is most important

Relieve the viewer of too much information so they can focus on meaningful information

BREAK FOR LUNCH

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