Dreama Tolle Perry Workshop Review

"Dreama's France", 12 x 12" oil on board
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I am so far behind in posting this blog that I am totally embarrassed! I realize that the last paintings I posted were from June, with the exception of my Tuscany trip. So I will make the effort to get you caught up to speed on what I have been doing, and maybe even the 'why' of it : )

From May 13-15 I had the great privilege to finally take a workshop with my painting hero, Dreama Tolle Perry. She was as lovely to learn from as she appears on her blog. LOVE her work, and she really made each person feel special and uniquely gifted, no matter the level of ability. I hope I learned as much about being a great art teacher as I did her painting techniques!

For the first 2 days we did paint alongs, so I will share both of those here. The one pictured above was from our second day, but I liked it best, so it got posted first. The second painting is below. I am not that much of a flower painter, but I do love them and have painted them often, just way less often than plein air landscapes -flowers are uniquely difficult to paint from life, and that is the way I prefer to paint.

"Dreama's Flowers", 12 x 12" oil on board
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The third painting I did, "Italian Colour" was posted on Aug 30th - if you want to have a look click here. That one I did totally on my own, using her method. Had to make sure I had it to use on my own photos before I left the workshop!

I have done several more using her technique of a wet colourful under-painting with opaque oils on top. You can see them here and here. I have done a couple of others as well that I will be posting in the near future. I have tried to adapt her style to my own plein air subjects in order to make the technique my own, and I must say I am encouraged by the results. However, more likely than not, I prefer to work on my signature red-orange ground.

Next post I will take you to Haida Gwaii, so stay tuned.

Enjoy!
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Tuscany Workshop -wrap up

"Bagno Sunshine", 6x16" plein air watercolor

This was my last demo of the workshop. It was done on my new block of Cartiera Magnani 'Portofino' hot pressed paper. This paper is absolutely wonderful for the pen and watercolour paintings, but also works great for regular painting. Look who came to check things out during the demo -could it be Dreama's cat Eddie??? I heard he was spying on her while she is in Italy...

Then I did this pen & ink & watercolour on our last day in Bagno Vignoni ( I posted a photo of the scene on day 10)

So that wraps up our trip. It was a wonderful workshop filled with sunshine and wonderful artists. Here is a photo of our small but happy group:

So I will leave you with our last sunset, this one taken from the plane on the way home.

Enjoy!

Tuscany Workshop -last day!

"Montigiovi Remembrance", 12x16" oil and collage

I was "playing painting" with great friend and fellow traveller,Lori, the other day after being out painting in the morning. We had made some collage surfaces using old posters that Lori had torn off walls on our journey. Then we went into them with oils, what a blast! I have done this a lot using acrylics, but the oils were so much more fun -easily blended and great opaque through transparent coverage. I will definitely be doing more of this : )

I can't believe it, but the last day of our wonderful workshop has come and gone. We are to be up at 5:45am and will be home at 9pm Calgary time (8 hr time difference)-LONG day!

Here is a watercolour card that I made to thank our wonderful driver, Joe.

Thanks for coming on this journey with me- it has been so fun and rewarding.

Enjoy!

Tuscany Workshop - day 10

"Bagno Vignoni View", 

Today we went to the gorgeous Bagno Vignoni. It looked like it might rain, but it passed over, and the resulting day was glorious. I did this pen & ink & wc sketch on my new pad of hot pressed watercolour paper, which was perfect for this approach. 

Here is my sketch before adding the watercolour 

I also did a watercolour demo (without the pen) on this paper that I will pst tomorrow, so stay tuned. 

Here is a photo from Bagno showing an artist's installation of painted marine floats in the pool

Enjoy!

Tuscany Workshop -day 9!

"Welcome Home", 8x10" Plein air oil on Arches Oil Paper mounted on board

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Today we visited the wonderful medieval hill town of Catiglione D'Orcia. (You should really Google image it!) I did the above demo using fab artist, Dreama Tolle Perry's technique (you should Google her as well to see her joy filled work). It started with a wet transparent under painting, shown below:

Here is a photo of the scene, FYI

And here is a photo of the fabulous Piazza Il Vecchieta, the original paving and well dating back to 1618 ( the light house on the right was a much latter addition)

Boy, I wish you could be here sharing this adventure with me! And thanks to all of you who have taken the time and effort to comment and let me know you are enjoying the journey vicariously. Cornelia, from Germany, kindly wrote to tell me that the pine trees in yesterday's post are called Stone Pines, how great is that! Thanks for the info - reminds me of a story book my kids loved called Stone Soup : )

Enjoy!

Tuscany Workshop -day 8

Today there was a huge market at nearby Castel Del Piano, so we thought we would take it in, even though it was supposed to be our day of rest. There is an awesome piazza there with a 1st world war memorial, surrounded by these incredible pine trees. They grow to incredible heights with no lower branches - if you know the name of them, please let us know!

Here is a decoration on a meat vendor booth at the market;

I thought you'd get a kick out of that, but I wouldn't want a slice on my panini!

Thanks to you, I now am the proud user of Snapseed -just the program I needed for my phone to do some great photo editing, and its free to boot. Try it out -simple to use with tons of ways to make your photos really sing. To thank you I will close with tonight's sunset, made to look just like I saw it with Snapseed!

Enjoy!

Tuscany Workshop -Day 5&6

"St. Antimo Abbey", 8x10" Plein air oil

PLEASE NOTE: I went back into this painting when I got home as it seemed to have 2 focal points! By this I mean that it was hard to tell whether the painting was about the grape vines or about the abbey. So I enlarged the vines and made them overlap the abbey, greyed the colour in the abbey and made the tall cypress bluer to send them into the background. I also rephotographed the painting so that you could see the actual colour!!

Sorry, but I was just having too much darn fun to post yesterday, but above is the oil I did at the Abbey. We were able to go in for a service and hear the monks do Gregorian chants, while sunbeams streamed through the windows (no stained glass here unfortunately)

Today we drove to Pienza, which I think is my favorite Italian town, after Assisi of course -such an amazing spirit in that place. St Francis would be pleased!

We spent our day doing pen & ink & watercolour sketching. Here are a few of mine (which are way too blue, but I didn't have image editing software on my phone at this point!):

The above one was done while I sat at a lovely cafe, under a large white umbrella, while sipping a birra (Italian for beer) and munching on a Calabrese salad -yum!

These sketches have a blue cast because I took them in the shade and, again, I don't have a photo editing program on my phone yet -which reminds me - any suggestions for a good iPhone app for this???

Enjoy!

"Italian Colour" oil painting, and I'M OFF TO TUSCANY!!

"Italian Colour", 12x12" oil painting on panel

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I did this painting at a Dreama Tolle Perry workshop this spring, using her method but without her input. I really like Dreama's style and use of colour, plus she has an unusual way of painting that is very intriguing, using a wet, transparent underpainting. (I did July 15th's post this way also). I hope to continue to experiment with this method of working.

I am off in the morning for Tuscany, Italy, where I will be teaching a 2 week plein air workshop. I am very excited about the whole thing, except for the travelling to get there part! I bought some "No Jet Lag" and really hope that helps. This is my first time teaching a) such a long, extensive workshop and b) a travel workshop. So wish me luck!!!

I probably will not be able to post while I am away, but I will be uploading images to Facebook, if you want to friend me :)

Ciao!

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