On the Other Side of the Fence

I love running workshops and yes, I do learn as well, from the students. Sometimes though one needs to be pushed and stretched. Where to go?? The answer came in the form of a wonderful tutor and artist - Hugo Grenville. I have long admired his work and knew him to be a good tutor from things I had heard so along with a good friend and fellow artist we booked ourselves onto a four day course called 'Making your Mark'.

We had to travel to Bristol so found a hotel. very conveniently situated just off the M5 and 10 minutes from the studio.
The first morning we painted intuitively to three pieces of music. The results when we all laid them out were interesting, you could immediately tell the difference between the Brahms and Janice Joplin paintings. Next exercise was to paint a memory, I chose to paint myself aged about 5 with my first dog sitting in a cane chair in the garden with a bowl of water. I can still remember Mum telling me off for sharing the water with the dog (eeeww!!)
These exercises loosened us up and got rid of inhibitions. After this we painted with complimentary colours, Primaries, painted without white, from black and white pictures of old masters using our own colour. a painting with only 20 brush strokes, painted from sketches made in local park, repainted in different colours - the list goes on, talk about outside of comfort zone.
Hugo throughout all this was very encouraging. There were eight of us on the course of varying abilities and he gave the same amount of time and encouragement to all.

I would recommend any artist to go on something like this. I'm not sure how it will affect my work in the future but for now I am loving playing with colour.

Happisburg Lighthouse Oil on board 8" x 8"