Prescott Workshop - great fun!

I had a wonderful group of students last week for my annual summer workshop in the mountains of Arizona "For Love or Money: Portraiture and the Pursuit of Excellence" - the best part is that I can't tell you much I learned.

We had live models on Monday and Wednesday, Julie under a warm light, and Percy under a cool light - I wanted everyone to have the chance to explore ways paint extreme differences in skin tones.

 

Above, Anne, who came all the way from New Zealand for my class, lays in her portrait of Percy.

On Tuesday and Thursday we completed the previous day's portraits from photos - understanding how to get excellent photo references is a key part of this course.  Below, Bonny works from her monitor and Patty checks her work by viewing both photo and painting upside down.

Below, some of my students' wonderful work!

 During the last hour of each day, discussions and visual presentations focused on the business aspects of portrait painting.

And of course our week's end group photo - thank you all for being part of this class!

Great Big Spider!! Soon:)

This is definitely not an art related post  - BUT.....I've lived in AZ since 1977, and in all those years have only seen one tarantula in the wild...and that was in about 1985, on a hiking expedition to AZ Four Peaks area - that spider was the size of a dinner plate. Today, this little creature showed up in Prescott, looking for a drink of water.