Setting Up For Robert Johnson's Painting Workshop At The Art Guild Of Port Washington

In July, The Art Guild of Port Washington was lucky enough to host Robert Johnson for a very rare New York area workshop.  I have a ton of photos from the workshop itself, but I thought you might like to see how we set up for a still life workshop.

I've been to several workshops where there are no set ups and the students are left to fend for themselves, often with lackluster props.  Also, there can be people in a workshop who are new to still life and may not know how to do a proper set up.   And don't get me started on sharing a set up in an expensive workshop.

When we do still life at The Art Guild, everyone has their own set up, already set up the day before the class starts.

We have a lot of props there as two of us are still life artists and there are also a lot of "community" props, things that people have donated and are for everyone to use.

Luckily, my studio mate is a very talented floral designer as well as a painter, so she is able to buy flowers at a distributor for the classes, and she makes the most amazing floral arrangements.

The first thing I do is get my own supplies together and pack them in my paint box.  It is one less thing to worry about in the midst of everything else that is going on.

Next up is purchasing supplies.  For a still life/floral workshop, we gather a few buckets full of flowers, and a variety of fruit ( lemons, red and green grapes, oranges, apples, etc).

We then get all the props in one place.  Fabrics, vases, small objects, crystal pieces and presentation boards to hold up the fabrics and create a background.

And then it begins.  We spend a LOT of time with the set ups.  It's quite rare that we just pull some objects and fruit and create a set up.  They go through lots of changes.  Fruit, objects and flowers go in and out until the still life is just right.  This can take some time and people often look at us like we are nuts, but what is the point in doing a workshop with all of these beautiful things if you are not going to make it the best it can be, right?

These are some of the set ups that we ended up with.  You may be wondering what the little post it notes on some of the shelves are for.  When using fruit in a still life, I like to include one or two pieces of cut fruit, but I don't want to do that until the morning of the workshop, so we put a mini post it in the spot we want to use for the fruit slice as a reminder.  This way it's easy to just come in and cut the fruit and not have to think about where it belongs.

Two other things I should mention.  Lighting is very important.  In a workshop, there is rarely natural light for everyone, so we use spotlights with daylight bulbs.  We just hook them up at either side of the still life to create shadows and they work very well.  The other is how we actually make the set up.  We use milk crates to create height and then lay wooden shelves on top of them.  If you go to Home Depot, you can just tell them the size you want and they will cut them up right there.  We then stained them with Minwax Dark Walnut.  We clip the fabric to the presentation boards and then you are ready to start styling.

When people see me doing set ups, they will often ask how I know when it's right.  I wish I had an answer to that question, but unfortunately, I don't.  I do follow two basic rules.  The still life should be a triangle and should read from left to right.  But the rest is just having an eye for when it is right.  I take my time with the set ups and if there has to be a ten minute discussion of whether there should be one grape or two on the right side of the still life, that is what happens.  I guess what I'm trying to say is, don't rush in order to get it done quickly and if something doesn't look quite right, change it.  No need to have anything that drags down the set up.

It is also really helpful to consult books on the type of set ups you want to do.  We had Robert Johnson's book open while we were doing these to make sure they were along the line of what he would want to paint.

In addition to Robert's book,  David Leffel and Sherrie McGraw's books are a great source of inspiration for this type of still life set up, as well as any book on Chardin or the Dutch Masters.  I look at them all the time and they are so helpful.

The students were so happy with the set ups and thanked us for making them available, which was so nice.  I want people at a workshop to be happy and if they are paying for the class, they deserve the best you can give. ( Can you tell I recently had a crappy workshop??? :)

I always love a behind the scenes look, so I hope you enjoyed this one.  I'll have a separate post about the workshop itself.  It was amazing.  If you have any questions about setting up a still life or a workshop, leave me a comment.  I'm happy to try and help!

** I just want to make clear as per the rules that I was not comped in any way for anything in this post.  I paid for the workshop and helped out as a volunteer. The props and supplies that were used were purchased by us or were things we already owned.**

New Painting: Cherry Blossoms

I mentioned in a previous post that I finished a second painting since getting back to the studio.  I started these cherry blossoms last March before the big mishap, and the canvas has been sitting in my studio ever since.  My first thought was to just leave it and finish it up next spring when the cherry blossoms are out again, and I also considered buying faux blossoms and trying to finish the painting that way.  But I never use faux flowers for painting and I really didn't want to leave it sitting around for another eight months.

Because the buds were so delicate, I painted the background and the ginger jar first.  This background has many coats of paint and I knew I would not be able to paint around the blooms, so as I did with my pussy willows, I let the background completely dry and then began doing the flowers.  I got two sessions in with them before I had to stop painting.

Fast forward to two weeks ago.  I finished the hydrangeas and needed another floral painting for a show I wanted to enter.  Since I am the slowest painter alive, I knew I could not crank out another painting in two days ( my time before the deadline).  On a whim I put the painting on the easel and just started painting.  I figured the worst that could happen was I would have to wipe it out.  No guts, no glory and all that.

This is where I left it the first night.  The flower buds went right in, and I faked the ones on the wood shelf, and they went in fine as well.  I also finished up the wood shelf without a problem.  I did all that with no reference material whatsoever, so what was the problem?  The ginger jar!  The one thing that was sitting right in front of me was the hardest part of this painting.

The problem was that I decided the jar needed a few more coats of paint.  That took some time, but was not too terrible.  The main problem was that I like to have my porcelains completely dry before I put the pattern on, but in this case that was not going to happen.  Now, I could have left well enough alone and just painted the pattern on the canvas the first day, but I have to have everything just right and the perfectionist in me could never just go with "good enough".  So the next day, deadline day, I got back to it.  I painted one more coat onto the jar and then got started putting in the pattern.  It was not as difficult as I had thought it would be.  The main difference is that it is not so easy to correct a mistake on a wet canvas.  On a dry canvas you simply wipe it down and start over.  With this situation, I still made plenty of mistakes, but had to be very delicate in removing them, as well as adding the paint back to the jar from the wipe out.  I also redid the highlight about a thousand times.  I was having a tough time getting it to look exactly like I wanted it to.  It either looked like a blob of white, or it took over the whole top quarter of the ginger jar.

Finally it all worked and I got my show submission in at 9:30 pm.  Two and a half hours before the deadline!  There are reasons my hubs refers to me as 'Last Minute Frances'  :)

This is the finished painting and I'm happy to say, it was accepted into the show!  I've already started a new painting, and it's very nice to just be painting without worrying about a deadline.  I'll have show info up soon.

Hydrangeas In A Small Ginger Jar

Back in December I painted a small painting for the 10x10 fundraising show to benefit The Art Guild of Port Washington.  It was the yearly fundraiser and there were so many beautiful paintings for sale.

Since the canvas was small, I decided to use my small ginger jar and add some hydrangeas.

While the original set up was cute, if you've been following this blog, you know I like to fill my canvas with flowers  The single bloom was just not working for me.  Luckily, the hydrangea bush is right outside my studio, so I simply clipped a few stems, stuck them in the vase and got to work.

Now things started moving along.  It was at this point that I knew the painting would work.  Always a great relief.

The pattern going in.  Always a scary time!

And here is the finished piece.  Painting for a fundraiser is always nerve wracking.  I really wanted this painting to sell.  I told my husband that if it didn't, he had to buy it ( and that exact thing happened in an episode of Midsomer Murders, so I'm not totally crazy!)  Luckily, it did sell and the fundraiser was quite successful.  We had a great night for a great cause.

Something Blue At The Art Guild Of Port Washington

Just a quick note to let everyone know that I have two paintings in the Something Blue show at The Art Guild of Port Washington.  I got a sneak peek last night and it is a great show, featuring the color blue in various art forms.

Here are my two entries.

The reception is tomorrow, Saturday, from 3-5pm.  If you are in the NYC/LI area, please come by.  It will be a fun time with a lot of great artwork.  Hope to see you there!

The Art Guild
200 Port Washington Blvd
Manhasset, NY

New Still Life: Blue And White With Oranges And Grapes

Hi All,

Good to be back! Things have been a little cray here and one of the reasons was the need to finish this painting.  I started on January 2nd and just finished last Monday.  The Art Guild is having a show called "Something Blue" and I wanted to enter and became completely obsessed with finishing this painting.

I set up the still life with a blue cloth and some blue and white porcelains.

I knew I wanted to add some oranges to make the whole thing pop, so I sketched them in even before I had them.  Of course, I ended up adding grapes as well (can't do a still life without grapes!).

This was the completed set up.  I blocked in the whole canvas and went to work from there.

An upside down painting is never a good sign.  I spent quite a bit of time with the t-square getting the symmetry of the three pieces done correctly.

Finally it started to look the way I envisioned.  At this point, I kept adding coats of paint and darkened up the shadows.

I gave the whole painting a few days to dry, then I put in the blue pattern on the white pieces.  I always do this part on a dry canvas because I will inevitably make a mistake, and this way I can just wipe it off with a paper towel and start again.

The last two weeks were mostly spent fussing with little things that I doubt anyone besides me would notice, but I really believe that you have to get those tiny details done correctly or it affects the whole painting.  So what did I do?  I brightened up the glass compote.  It was looking a little dull and not fitting in with the rest of the painting.  One day I got so annoyed with it that I just threw a stroke of white on it and that did the trick.  I also spent some time fixing the bottom of the pitcher on the left.  It was not as round as I wanted so I had to play with the light and shadow a bit.  I also lightened up the cloth near the cut orange to help bring the viewer's eye across the painting.  The last thing I did was brighten up the grapes to the left of the pitcher.  There was no light happening in that area of the painting and it needed some.

Here is the finished painting.  I'm really glad I kept at it with this one.  There were days when it was beyond frustrating, but it was all worth it in the end.  The painting did make it into the show!  Opening and reception will be March 3rd.  I'll post details as it gets closer for anyone in the area who might like to stop in.

Notecards Of My Paintings Available At Blake And Taylor!

You may remember my post a few months ago announcing that prints and notecards of my florals are now available through the Blake and Taylor shop in Brisbane, Australia.

I had a few requests for a direct link for the notecards, so I wanted to post it here, along with a few photos.

Ellie kindly sent me a packet of the cards and they are beautiful.  Photos do not do them justice.  The cards are printed on heavy stock and are perfect to use for any notes you may need to send.  In these days of instant messages and texts, a hand written note is a special treat and these are perfect for any occasion.

They are also heavy enough to be framed, which is what I am doing with my set.  

Here are the photos of the original paintings. These are also available as prints with free, worldwide shipping.  (The cards have a small shipping fee).

Hope you'll take a look over at the Blake and Taylor website.  Let me know if you pick up the cards or prints!