Peaches and cream with John Wilson

John Wilson is an artist with a worldwide reputation. Based in the Blue Mountains, a couple of hours drive from Sydney, John has built a career on capturing the region in oil paint and last month I was lucky enough to find a spot in one of his 10-day masterclass workshops.

It was an amazing experience as John gave students his recipe for "peaches and cream" and "apricot" and explained his use of foundational warm and cool greys. No questions went unanswered as John shared the knowledge borne from of his years of professional experience.

Of the 10 days, three involved painting en plein air in some of the most beautiful places on earth. We painted from the Megalong Valley to the Capertee Valley and it was easy to see why so many artists are drawn to the region.

I ventured out on my own, before and after class every day and on the weekend in the middle of the course, snapping hundreds of photos. I also managed to do a few of my own paintings on the edge of the Katoomba cliffs.

One of my more-successful attempts was painted one morning from a cliff face not far from the Sky Rider motel where I stayed.

 Near Devils Hole (plein air)

25x20cm oil on canvas board.  

© Andy Dolphin

One thing you quickly learn here is to pay attention at the start and to cement the image in your mind because the light can change dramatically even in the short time it takes to do a small painting like this one.

And here is the "proof I really was there" photo.

As you can see in this photo, the dramatic shadow cast by the distant mountains in my painting was almost completely gone by the time I put down my brushes, less than one hour after I began.

One evening I went to a small lookout just before sunset and decided to challenge myself to see just how fast I could paint something.

I set about capturing the Three Sisters, arguably Katoomba's single-biggest natural attraction, as the light shifted rapidly with massive thunderhead clouds building all around and changing from bright fluffy white to rich, deep shades of orange and purple.

The final painting took about 30 minutes, after which there was no sunlight on the cliffs and it was too dark to tell what colours I was mixing.

Three Sisters (plein air)

20x25cm oil on canvas board.  

© Andy Dolphin

As a painting, it leaves a little to be desired but as an exercise, I absolutely love it.

Thanks John and Cecelia, and everyone who attended the workshop, for an inspirational two weeks with some great people. I hope to do it again soon.

Mt Barker painting workshop - brushwork

I hosted a painting workshop in my home town on Saturday. The principal subject for this workshop was "loose brushwork" and three-colour palettes.

We had a great bunch of people, including a few who were new to oils and some who hadn't used oils for a while. Some terrific work was done with a range of styles showing through.

Here's my 25x35cm (10x14") demonstration piece, completed with one flat synthetic brush about 2cm wide. I popped it in a spare frame at the finish.

I spoke about tonal under-painting, complementary colours, warms and cools and keeping the brushstrokes simple and as large as practical for as long as possible. The demonstrated technique lends itself well to plein air work.

I'm available to do workshops or demonstrations throughout the Great Southern, from Walpole to Kojonup, Katanning and Albany. Enquiries are also welcome from outside the region. If you have a group interested in a painting workshop, drop me a line at adolphin@westnet.com.au

Painting workshop in Albany

I hosted a painting workshop at Albany's Vancouver Art Centre yesterday for members of the Albany Art Group. We all had fun and there was some impressive results among the group.

As with my previous workshop in Mt Barker, I had members choose just three colours - a "red", a "yellow" and a "blue" - plus white, from their own sets of oils or acrylics. Then everyone followed along as I painted a seascape with a foreground sand dune in shadow.

Here's my demo painting from the workshop. The room we used at VAC has mercury vapour lighting which, being strong in the green end of the spectrum, sucks the life out of reds. As a result, there's a tendency to compensate by adding more red than usual into mixes. The photo was taken outdoors, where the red shows up quite strongly under natural lighting.

Here's some of the team hard at work.

My thanks go to everyone who attended and I look forward to doing it again.

Mt Barker painting workshop

Last weekend I hosted a painting workshop for members of Mitchell House in my home town. We had a great day and there was some terrific work done.

I had members choose just three colours - a "red", a "yellow" and a "blue" - plus white, from their own sets of oils or acrylics. Then everyone followed along as I painted a karri forest scene. The idea here was to shift the emphasis from colour to tone. Instead of everyone trying to get the exact same reds or browns or greens, they used their own limited palette to match the tones in my demonstration painting.

It's too easy to get bogged down in trying to match colours when tone is what sets the foundation of a work.

Here's my demo painting from the workshop.

I used French ultramarine, cadmium yellow deep and permanent crimson in my demonstration (I saw some wonderful results with burnt sienna as the "red" and yellow ochre as the "yellow"). My painting is on a Fredrix 10x14" (255x355mm) canvas board and was done almost entirely with just one large (approx 2cm wide) synthetic, chisel-edged brush. I used a tiny amount of odourless solvent as my "medium".

I have a little more to say on the ideas covered in my workshops in my article from a similar workshop I did last year.

I'm available to do workshops or demonstrations throughout the Great Southern, from Walpole to Kojonup, Katanning and Albany. Enquiries are also welcome from outside the region. If you have a group interested in a painting workshop, drop me a line at adolphin@westnet.com.au

I work in oils but several students have used acrylics with great success.

Examples from previous oil painting workshops:

Here are some of my demonstration paintings from previous workshops.

August Workshops

I did two workshops earlier this month - the first for Gallery 500 and the second for Albany Art Group. Here are the demonstration pieces I did in each workshop...

In this seascape, done with Gallery 500 at Terra Verde Gallery in Albany, I focussed mainly on translucent water and the colours required to make a convincing "white" in sunlight and shade.

I did this landscape with Albany Art Group. My main interest here was aerial perspective and shadow-sunlight contrast. The original is very warm as we were painting under mercury-vapour lamps which lean heavily toward blue-green and tend to suck the life out of reds and oranges. Consequently, there's a tendency to mix these colours more saturated than usual.

I'm still here!

Things have been a bit quiet on the art front for me lately. I'm still without a practical painting space but progress on the studio is taking place - or at least, it was until I sliced the tip of my finger on some galvanised flashing (It's pretty minor but I'm trying hard to keep it clean) and now we have some severe weather happening so progress has halted - again. On top of this, my real job as been hectic for quite a while (cue the violins!).

I've got a couple of workshops coming up very soon. Next weekend, Saturday August 6, I have another workshop with Gallery 500 at their Terra Verde Gallery in Albany. By popular demand, I'll be revisiting seascapes in this one. The first three were great fun and the finished works were fantastic so I'm looking forward to seeing what we can produce this time.

The following week, Thursday August 10, I'm doing a workshop with the Albany Art Group and Vancouver Arts Centre.

Army Art is on again in Perth in a couple of weeks. I've entered two pieces and I'm hoping to travel up there and meet up with some of my old art friends.

This year's exhibition will be held at Leeuwin Barracks, Riverside Road, East Fremantle on Saturday and Sunday, 12th & 13th of August. All exhibited work will be for sale and part proceeds will benefit The Fremantle Foundation.

Forest Workshop

I enjoyed another great workshop yesterday at Terra Verde Gallery in Albany.

The subject this time was a Karri Forest. These are not the easiest things to paint but, once again, everyone did a terrific job in the time available.

Here's a small (20x26cm) reference I painted last weekend...

It's a fairly simple design and not without its faults - like the small tree being too close to the centre of the painting - but it did the job as a reference sketch.

Here's my demonstration painting from the workshop (the photography on these isn't great). I used a limited palette approach on this one to simplify the process a little...

The major lessons here include atmospheric perspective and tonal contrast. While our minds will usually read a karri tree trunk as being somewhat pale, or "beige", it is actually quite dark except where the sunlight hits. You can see this in the greyscale image below. Note how dark the trunk of the main tree is against the sky...

Tones are relative to surroundings so the smoother bark on the tree is lighter than the rough bark and the shadowed foreground shrubbery but quite dark compared to other parts of the painting. You can also see how the shadow-side of the smaller tree is virtually the same tone as the background yet it stands out quite clearly in the colour image. This is where temperature changes get to work to differentiate objects.

Getting these tones right, especially in seemingly busy scenes like this, can present a challenge to the uninitiated. To be honest, it still tests me.

This simple graphic demonstrates the concept. The small grey rectangle appears to change tone but it is in fact just one shade of grey all over. It is the changing tones surrounding it that affect our perception of it.

Is it any wonder tonalism is such a challenge when our minds play tricks like this on us?

Here's some pics of the workshop gang hard at work...

Thanks again to everyone for making these workshops so enjoyable.

June Workshop - Forest

Gallery 500 have invited me to do another painting workshop for them.

Workshops run for around four hours on a Saturday morning and students paint along with me as I break down my process of painting sunlight into easily managed stages.

The techniques demonstrated suit either plein air or studio painting. While I paint in oils, the approach works equally well for acrylics.

This month's subject will be "Karri Forest " and the date is set for June 25th.

If you're interested in attending, contact Brad at Gallery 500 in Albany, WA.

In the meantime, here's another digital "seascape"...

(Wave at The Gap. 1500x900px digital. © Andy Dolphin)

I wanted something a little different to the usual seascape vista with beach and sky so I focussed on a single wave breaking along the rock wall of The Gap, near Albany.

It's a long way down from the lookout platform to the water and it's difficult to judge scale when the only references are the water itself and the massive wall of rock. I'd estimate this wave to be around two-three metres tall - it could even be bigger.

I'm particularly interested in the various surface textures of clear water and foam.

May Workshop

I did my second workshop for Gallery 500 in Albany yesterday morning. It was nice to see some familiar faces from my landscape painting workshop, along with some new faces.

The subject this time was "Seascape" and I took the students through my approach to waves, flat water, rocks, sand, wet sand and, of course, sunlight and atmosphere.

My reference for the morning was a painting I did in preparation last weekend...

There's quite a bit happening in this small (25x35cm - 10x14") painting which took around four hours to finish. I wasn't expecting this same level of detail in a workshop setting where we only had four hours for explanation, demonstration and following along. Time got tight near the end as we were all adding those last bits of sunlight and detail. Even so, the results from the group were amazing.

Here's my demonstration painting from yesterday's workshop so you can play "spot the difference" with my reference painting...

In reality, this probably represents about one to one and a half hours actual painting time.

I didn't have my camera with me but I hope to post some photos of everyone hard at work when I can.

Thanks again to Brad and Jo of Gallery 500 for inviting me and to everyone who attended.

UPDATE:

Photos of some of the gang hard at work. Thanks to Ros for sending these to me.

May Workshop

After a very successful oil painting workshop in March, Gallery 500 have invited me to do another workshop in May.

Workshops run for around four hours on a Saturday morning and students paint along with me as I break down my process of painting sunlight into easily managed stages.

The techniques demonstrated suit either plein air or studio painting. While I paint in oils, the approach works equally well for acrylics.

If you're interested in attending, contact Brad at Gallery 500 in Albany, WA.

Albany Workshop

Today I did a workshop for Gallery 500 in Albany, hopefully the first of many.

With ten keen and competent "students" and a wonderful workspace at Terra Verde Gallery, it was a great way to spend a few hours on a beautiful autumn morning.

I explained my approach to painting light in the landscape and everyone followed along as I demonstrated each step. With lots of good questions, exchanges of ideas and some good conversation, it was all great fun.

This is my painting, based on a digital image I came up with in my head a few months ago...

And here's a few pics of everyone hard at work as I cracked the whip...

Thanks to Brad and Jo of Gallery 500 for inviting me and to everyone who attended.

My next workshop is planned for late May. Contact Gallery 500 for details.