Rocky Point, Carmel

Rocky Point, Carmel

original oil painting, 11x14 $475 framed

Viewpoints Gallery

In April, I took a painting workshop from Ray Roberts in Carmel.  We had perfect sunny weather for plein air painting.  On the last day of the workshop we painted at Rocky Point, located between Carmel and Big Sur. We ate lunch at the restaurant on the cliffs with a spectacular view of the Pacific Ocean. I painted some small studies on site and then created the painting above back at my studio.

Ray was talking to me about the warm reflected light on the rocks in the shadows.  I always think of shadows as being cool, but you could see the warmth in the shadows.  The number 1 lesson from Ray was to get your shadow shapes in first, when painting plein air.  

While I was painting the cliffs and ocean, Peggi Kroll Roberts was painting me.  She was working in goauche - I believe starting with a pencil sketch and laying in big areas of color to represent the different values.  How cool is that to be painted by Peggi Kroll Roberts!

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Kathy McGuire

original gouache by Peggi Kroll Roberts

Peggi Kroll Roberts' workshop

Lesson: Limited Strokes

from Peggi Kroll Roberts' workshop

I just completed a three day workshop with Peggi Kroll Roberts.  My favorite lesson was "limited strokes." Each artist was asked to complete a painting in 20 brushstrokes.  It forced me to keep big areas of shadow and light together, so that each area read as a big block of value.  It also forced me to use a lot of paint on the brush.  For example, to cover the whole background with the same color of paint - in one brushstroke - I had to REALLY load up the paint on my brush.
  

I highly recommend Peggi's workshops.  She's an excellent teacher and extremely knowledgeable about figures and still life painting.

Figure Painting Workshop

I just finished a three-day figure painting workshop with Peggi Kroll Roberts.  Peggi is an excellent teacher with a vast knowledge of figure painting.  It's kind of like boot camp for figure painting.  She has many different exercises to get you started. 

My favorite exercise was painting the figure in 25 strokes.  This may seem very difficult, and it was, but you can paint the whole background in one stroke if you load up your paintbrush with lots of paint and don't lift the paintbrush until the entire background is covered.  That was just one of the many exercises.

I can still hear her saying "there are two kinds of shadows that occur when light shines on an object, form shadows and cast shadows.  Where the light side of the object meets the form shadow is the core shadow. The core shadow is where the object turns away from the light."

Take a look at Peggi's website to see her work.  I highly recommend her figure painting workshop.