This is part of the series ‘My journey with the Masters’
Day One – The workshop description:
Abstracting the Landscape: A mixed media painting workshop designed for people who would like to work in a more expressive way or want to ‘loosen up’. I will show how to make quick visual ‘notes’ while experiencing the landscape, then help to develop them into abstract landscape compositions.
Caroline Chappell paints Expressive Landscapes with varying degrees of abstraction. Her main medium is acrylic and many of her works are mixed media and often include a collage of other pieces of her artworks. She is an excellent teacher as well as being an outstanding artist who has won many awards – as you will see from her website. I was fortunate to be able to join this workshop with Caroline.
On the first day, it was raining – alas. So, outdoors came indoors and armed with a branch, a large sheet of sugar paper, and charcoal to start with, we began drawing… progressing to graphite and compressed charcoal. White conté and black ink completed our artworks. Below you can see my landscape.
Some of the other work can be seen here:
Right: Phillip Franc – who was flexing his art muscles
We spoke about the colours (and did some swatches with colour ‘pops’) of Spring colours and high-key palettes. Caroline demonstrated various ways of making marks and using acrylic creatively. After lunch we did two abstract compositions, with ideas from Caroline about dividing the paper, layering and mark making. Tools were palette knives, credit cards, cardboard, scratching, transparency etc. I enjoyed this even though acrylic is not my medium. I can see that acrylic can be integrated into my working method.
In my second composition I used the spring palette and bright orange to make it ‘pop’. (I love this term – ‘making it pop’ and intend adopting it!) Using limited palettes works so well, especially where there is textural interest, as you can see from my two pieces.
Bottom: Rachel Anne Cronin – painter and art teacher
When I look at results like it is obvious that the teacher is very creative and able to work with people using their own strengths in such a way that their work is unique, rather than pale copies of her work. Caroline is an outstanding teacher.
Of course, this is a creative workshop, rather than a technical skills workshop, so you can judge by looking at the variety of work produced. In my Journey with the Masters I’ll be doing both sorts of workshop. And also work in my studio, integrating what I have learnt!
The post next week will be Abstracting the Landscape Part 2.drawing
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