Still Life in Oil Workshop

What a great still life class we had in early December! Seven students and three set-ups (sorry, one is not pictured) provided an interesting and challenging four days...yes, for them! Still life painting is sucha wonderful training ground for all genres of painting. Painters included Susan Deryke, Henne Karavitch, Sharon Mullings, Susan Phillips, Linda Rubenstein, Dru Sumner (recently married and name may have changed!) and Bert Schaffer. Great Group!

Great Landscape Workshop!

Boy, did everyone do a great job on these paintings! This was a really great workshop a couple of weeks ago. These photos were taken on the last day, Critique Day! Everyone made great progress and really produced some great paintings! A round of applause for these beautiful art works!

Painting with a Palette Knife

Outbuildings, 9 x 12, oil on canvas, copyright Pat Aube Gray 2008

I had a great time these past three days in a palette knife oil workshop I held in the teaching studio at Carriage House Art Center in Blairsville (www.carriagehouseartcenter.com). Had a great group, including several returning students whom I have not seen in a while, so it was a little like old home week. Everyone did a great job on their paintings, some jumping right in with the knife and others, perhaps at first, a little intimidated by the lack of control over a knife versus a brush. But by the second day, the paintings just emerged beautifully under the more confident hands of these good painters. As for me, I painted the small demo seen above, entirely with palette knives, as a demonstration during the workshop. Everyone worked from my photographs and most were summer scenes. As with the painting above, dealing with so much green in hte summer can be a challenge. There are actually many other colors besides green in the grass and foliage than perhaps can be seen here. I did get a decent start on a second larger painting and hope to finish it this week.

2008 Class & Workshop Schedule

Enamel Pot & Eggs, copyright Pat Aube Gray 2007

Finally my Studio Class & Workshop Schedule for the balance of 2008 is completed and available for you to download! Go to the very top of the right hand column of this blog and click on the link that will take you to my new website, where you can download a printable schedule! Though the website is still not complete, I am happy to say that this portion is up and running. I apologize for the lateness of this schedule, but there really were mitigating circumstances.

I continue to paint in absolute comfort, though I am still in the demo and small works stage. I have two portrait commissions I must do, one is in progress and the other is at rough-in. I find that my motivation to paint has only just returned since the tragic death of my daughter nine months ago and it coincides well with the now painless use of my right arm and shoulder.

Several months ago I digitally recorded (audio only) a class lecture I gave spontaneously on aerial perspective. The digital audio file has been uploaded to my computer and I am able to email it. If you would be interested in receiving it, just drop me an email at patzg@aol.com and I will be happy to send it to you.

Hope to see you in the studio!

Learning by Teaching

It is still early in 2007 and already I have taught a six-day workshop in oil portraits in North Carolina, five three-hour sessions of my weekly classes in my teaching studio, and I have attended one four-day workshop! I have six more painting or drawing workshops and those weekly classes scheduled to teach for the remainder of the year.
A schedule like this is very time consuming, not to mention that it seriously cuts into what might otherwise be painting time. So I often question why I keep doing it!
The first answer is, of course, the most obvious. It helps pay the bills. There are times when painting sales and commissions may be slow in coming, and teaching helps fill those gaps. While I keep my class and workshop prices as low as possible, the income is still a necessary addition to the income stream. The other reasons I continue to teach are far less tangible. I have given much thought to this and have found that I have really learned by teaching. I have learned about my own philosophical and analytical thinking every time I have to explain a particular aspect of painting to a student. I must think, question and explore while I am painting and read constantly to stay abreast of other artists, their art, their methods and their styles. I have to understand color and composition well enough that I can explain them to students in ways that will be meaningful to their progress as painters.
I love learning so this is wonderful for me. And I truly love imparting what I know to others hungry to know it! There is nothing as gratifying as seeing a student in an A-Ha! moment only to go on to improve their work with his or her newfound knowledge.
The last, but certainly not least, aspect of teaching is the forging of wonderful friendships with those whose interests are well aligned with mine. There are a good number of students who have taken my classes or workshops for years and my life would not be the same without them. I thank them all.

2007 Class & Workshop Scedule

My schedule of art classes and workshops has been released for 2007 and can be found at http://carriagehouseframing.com/2007ClassSched.pdf