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| "Out the Window" oil demonstration (Photo by Nancy Vance) |
It's hard for me to believe, but it's been almost a month since we hit the road on our annual spring trip east. Right now, we're in Vermont. After weeks of cloudy, cool weather in the Champlain Valley, the sun returned yesterday. People now have a chance to smell the lilacs, mow their lawns and gather rhubarb for pies.
This past week, I taught two workshops, one in Columbus, Ohio, and the other in Montgomery, New York. In this post, I'll write a little about the Ohio workshop.
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| Springtime is tick time in much of the country. Here I model my tick gear while showing thumbnail sketches to the group. I'm wearing pyrethrin pants tucked into my socks, with Naturpel (picaridin) sprayed on everything below the knees. (Photo by Nancy Vance) |
My friend, Nancy Vance, has joined me in many workshops and painting retreats, both in the US and abroad. Recently, she offered to sponsor a workshop with her group, Central Ohio Plein Air. Since Nancy is a wonderful organizer and Columbus was on our route east, I agreed right away.
Spring weather in Ohio can run the gamut from heat waves and tornadoes to rain and even snow. For our workshop, we had something right in the middle: pleasantly cool weather. Drizzle the first day kept us indoors. However, we were based at the Stratford Ecological Center which, besides being a working farm with barns, cows, pigs, sheep, llamas and bees, offers a large workshop space, so we were comfortable. I painted two demonstrations for the thirteen painters. First was a pastel from a photo, followed later in the day by a "looking out the window" oil demo. The next day, the sun appeared, and we enjoyed painting the landscape from life. I painted two more demonstrations for everyone, one showing how to start a painting with a monochromatic underpainting and the second showing how to achieve depth in your painting easily.
(All photos above by Nancy)
Nancy wrote a really nice blog post on the workshop: https://nartizt.blogspot.com/2017/05/hosting-michael-chesley-johnson-workshop.html Thank you to Nancy, and to everyone who came out for the workshop! I enjoyed the workshop so much we have scheduled a return for October 2018,
Next, I'll write about my workshop in Montgomery, New York, for the Wallkill River School of Art.
