3 Day Workshop

Mastering the Landscape Light in Canmore & Banff

August 23-25th. 2010

$395 USD

Oil, Pastel & Acrylic student's welcome . Beginner - Advanced

This 3-day workshop will be conducted for students who want to improve their color, composition and value skills. Through various exercises the students will have a deeper understanding of capturing the natural landscape light in a more precise way. Mother Nature provides us with a wealth of information and we will learn to edit and incorporate that into our plein-air paintings. The goal is to fully appreciate and understand how to capture and paint the beauty of Canmore, Banff and the surrounding areas. This is the most valuable tool a landscape artist has in developing larger compositions in the studio. These studies are the soul of our studio work...

Earlier this spring we invited the watercolourist extraordinaire Alex Fong to do a workshop. For the Friday evening demo he painted a series of small paintings in between working on a larger piece. At some point in the process the larger one decided it wanted to get a bit unruly and didn't want to play fair.

Well after sitting in the corner on the bad boy easel for a spell, once back in Kelowna this painting got a stern talking to. I have posted what has emerged. A very well mannered polite unspoiled watercolour. That was a great lesson about not overworking a painting and just moving on, allowing things time to sort them selves out. We all know you need patience to do watercolour but it takes a real master like Alex to stop, put it away and wait to have a later look, with a fresh set of eyes.

{Intoduction by Doug Swinton, Article by Jerry Markham}

HELLO. I have been writing this newsletter for 16 years, and this time I  decided, while painting in Southern California, I should get a guest artist to write something so I can stay on the beach a little longer and paint. “What a great idea”, I said while eating a bag of Doritos and contemplating why my palm trees look like sticks with explosions on top. I can’t remember if we have ever had a guest writer or not. If anyone remembers, please jog my ever fading memory....................