Camille Przewodek teaches a regular Monday class at her studio in Petaluma. She’s one of my favorite teachers (her new series of marsh paintings are incredible), and she has a nice group of regular students.

We started by Camille offering a crtique to see what everyone had accomplished since she’d seen them last. I happened to have a couple of paintings in the trunk, so had something to show (Land’s End, Fall in Golden Gate Park). She thinks my brushwork has come a long way, and likes the expressive strokes, as well as my drawing and composition skills. She felt I needed to work on depth (which I agree with).

I’m studying with Camille in Hawaii in February–and can’t wait! I know I’ll learn a lot, and be inspired by the locations we’ll paint. I can highly recommend Camille for any level student (click for her workshop information).

As we often do, we painted still life studies outdoors, some students painted color blocks (a great exercise) while others painted a traditional still life. I set up a couple of plastic lemons, a green bowl and a cream pitcher. Here it is.

Untitled
Oil on Linen - 9×12 ($175, unframed study)

My supplies are arriving back from my recent trips (Ovanes Berberian workshop and Telluride Plein Air), so I am finding paintings that hadn’t yet been photographed and posted.

This is an interesting one. It’s near abstract. My focus was on color harmony, not form. Kind of like it–at least it’s something different from my normal work.

Untitled - Oil on Board - 10×8

Having been now to two Ovanes Berberian workshops, and realizing that lots of readers plan to attend as well (some this week), I thought I’d provide some suggestions for a successful workshop:

• Most days, Ovanes doesn’t get out to look at his student’s work until 2-3pm. I tended to paint quick color studies in the morning, and take a long lunch break (with nap!). When I returned to paint larger studies around 2PM, he was there to help. Leave your early morning work by your easel so he can see those as well.
• Although the materials list you’ll get says to take very large canvas, I don’t recommend it. First, you’re painting still life studies under trees and the light is shifting all the time. It’s much better to paint lots of smaller starts and show them to Ovanes. If you want to paint larger, setup outside the apple orchard: if you’re facing Ovanes’ house, this is the area to the far left, near the parking area. This area has a lot less light variation and will give you the time to paint large.
• Due to the shifting light, I suggest you paint everything in shadow/mid-tone, and then add your lights in the last 10% of the painting. This works well for flowers, but less so for the table top and background, which you may need to scrape and repaint at the end to avoid chalky or muddy colors.
• Apparently, Damar Varnish was left off the materials list. Remember, if you want to tone your canvas like Ovanes, bring Phthalo Blue, Black, Linseed Oil (1/8) and remaining 50% Damar Varnish, and Gum Spirits Turpentine (don’t use an odorless substitute in your medium).
• Again, I would take lots of 8×10 - 9×12 to paint quick color and block-in studies, and a few larger (12×16 to 16×20) to paint a few finished pieces.
• The suggested materials lists a LOT of color. You really don’t need them all, and if you’re not familiar with them, will likely not have success. I suggest you bring one warm, one cool for each color hue. If you’re really a beginner, suggest bringing Cad Yellow Light, Phthalo Blue, Quinacridone Red, Black and White. He’ll describe this basic starting palette in the Monday morning lecture.
• Ovanes’ assistant Vickie Reese offers a tour of her nearby studio on Thurs. While her studio is great, this is actually a great time to get Ovanes’ time. He’s shy, so typically when everyone piles into their cars for this tour, he’ll come out when there are only a few dedicated folks left. I got lots of quality time with him then.
• When Ovanes does come out, follow him around and listen and watch him paint on other students canvas. Sure, you want him to critique your own work, but it’s just as valuable to witness his work with others.
• Bring several paintings (3-4) to the Friday afternoon (5PM) critique. He spends a lot of time on these, and the information is really valuable. You’ll probably get more time in this critique with Ovanes than you will during the week outside. Also realize that Ovanes will be much more critical of the better painters, and will offer less praise. He tends to want to really push the better painters forward, and offer lots of praise to novices so as to not discourage them.
• For the Tuesday and Thursday night demos–be prepared for a late night (12-1am). The demos are really amazing. John tapes each one and makes them available in DVD format by the end of the week.
• Want to see what the still life setups look like, click the photo above for a movie.

Have you attended an Ovanes Berberian workshop? Please chime in with your own tips using the comments feature. Want to prepare for your workshop in advance? My sponsor, Virtual Art Academy is run by Barry John Raybould, who also studied with Ovanes. His online, self-study courses are great. Click here to learn more.

Update: To get on the email list to attend a Ovanes Berberian workshop, contact Ray Morrison:

BERBERIAN WORKSHOPS

1838 YALECREST AVE

SALT LAKE CITY, UT 8410

Email ray@trioeditions.com

I stayed the Memorial Day weekend at Lake Alta, a favorite get-away, owned by friends Sam and Phil.  We’ve been going to the lake now, perhaps twice a year, for the past 17 years, so I’ve painted it many, many times.  That weekend, I went in search of other material, particularly because the light that weekend was quite silver, as there where layers of clouds that prevented full, warm light.  I was surprised to see it silver, even in the morning.

Light aside, our friend Rick made dinner the night before and cut some flowers from the garden for the table.  Made a good still life, so I set up my easel outside and placed the vase on a red bench.  The funny thing is, this same red was used to paint their horse stable, so you’ll see in my next post how the paintings sort of work together.

Still Life at The Miller’s - Oil on Linen - 10×8

We painted still life setups outside today. Beautiful day, a little too warm in fact. I got bored painting still life, so painted two other artists. One painting of a yellow chair was just okay, so I wiped it.

This is my first still life of the morning, a quick small “warm-up” study.

Green Vase - Oil on Linen - 6×8 - $100 AVAILABLE
After painting another still life (yellow chair), and feeling bored, I wiped it and painted this of local (Tempe) artist/student, Gina. I’m pretty happy with this one.

Gina - Oil on Linen - 6×8 - SOLD
This was painting was done of Sue.

Sue - 12×9 - Oil on Linen

Gay painted the demo below, then we spent the day painting small studies (about 30 minutes each).

Gay started with the basic drawing:

Started with darks, and as usualy takes each object to relative completion.

More objects:

more…

more…

The finished study:

This one is mine, I painted a section of the same still life set up.

Another of my 4 studies today. I’m happy with the watermelon color, but had problems with the drawing of the brass pot behind…It meets the slice of melon in an awkward way.

A blah study for me. Nothing reallying happening. I struggled with the cup.

My last study of the day. I’m happy with the color harmony here. Exhausing day!

I’m not going to write a lot of thoughts tonight about this day and workshop as I would like to absorb more lessons and “boil it down” effectively. For now, I hope these picutres are helpful.

Gay began be demonstrating her palette:

Here’s her demo at the drawing stage. She began with a light violet wash.

Gay started with larger dark areas, then went from object to object, completing both light and shade planes, keeping things flat at this point.

She kept her values in a relatively close range, mid-value at this point, but again worked every object close to completion.

Notice the texture she’s building, even at this early stage. Really interesting brush strokes and direction.

Here’s the final demo.

Here’s my study for the day. As I compare my work to hers, clearly I don’t have enough sophisticated grays. I need to work on this. She did like my color and brushwork, but felt I took the painting too far, eg, I had it more abstract before this, and then wrapped the apples in dark strokes to better define them. Should have left them as is. How many artists does it take to finish a painting? One to paint, another to tell them when to stop.

Red Reflections - Oil on Linen - 8×10 - SOLD

I painted this small, 8×10 still life study Wed. night.  I only had a short time to paint, and since my goal is to paint every day, thought I’d better paint something.  Anything.  It was too late to go out, so I picked some flowers from our garden, found a vase, table cloth, and set up a still life in my “studio” (garage!).

I started with Ovanes’ method of washes.  I probably should have left the background wash alone (it was a very deep red), but I found the flowers were not “popping” as I’d like.  The background needed a color shift from warm to cool, and also from pure, raw color to a gray to give the flowers a stage to shine as the star attraction.  You’ll need to click the image below to see full-screen to see some of what I’m talking about.  It was fun pouring on the paint!  It’s paintings like these that I’m glad in paint in oil.
I’m delivering this today to Viewpoints Gallery for my July show there.

Green Vase - Oil on Canvas - 8×10 

This has been an exhausting week, but I learned a lot. The painting on the left is my last effort, which I think is a big improvement over the week. Click the image on the left to see details/enlarge. I’m going to add a few things (eg, light reflected off the bottle), but it’s near done. Ovanes was very happy with the color harmony and painting overall of the milk jub and the lower right fruit. Ovanes did feel that the table top was too warm; the green cup was getting a little chalky; and the blue and green container in the back was a bit too broken.Perhaps over the next weeks, depending upon interest (enter comments if you’re reading this blog!), I’ll include screen shots of how I’m applying his process, showing things I wasn’t able to photograph in his studio.