Marc Hanson workshop...Day 2

Tuesday morning we gather on the porch of Leiper's Fork Gallery and then make our way a mile or two down the road to a beautiful ranch, familiar to many of us from previous workshops and paint-outs. Because it's Spring in Tennessee, we spent several minutes spraying ourselves silly with various versions of anti-tick & chigger sprays. You cannot be too careful! 

Marc Hanson, again, started us out by sharing his vast knowledge, this time covering the topic of color, which is no small subject matter. You can tell when someone has truly wrestled with and mastered an issue; they speak with what could be described as grace. Big words and flashy accessories are not required...Marc plunged through a wealth of information about the primary colors and their characteristics, the warm and cool versions of each, the subjectiveness of color temperature, the need for both knowledge and intuition with color decisions.

For me, the big take-away was to learn to mix colors intelligently. This requires that I observe how much red or blue or yellow is in the local color of the scene I am painting, the intuition of how warm or cool that color may need to be, the knowledge of which version of the primaries to choose to reach that desired color.

We were then turned loose to find the scene that was speaking to each of us. This was the one I chose:

Isn't it pretty? Tennessee basically comes in one color in the spring. If you guessed "green" you would be correct! And green just happens to be one of the most challenging, not only to mix, but to render it in such a way that is actually pleasing in a painting is super difficult.  I knew that going into my painting, but still happily had naive hopes that I could work it out.

What did happen was sort of a murky green mess, but, as you mindful readers know, it is our mistakes that teach us the most!

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Lucky for me, Marc chose the same part of the creek to paint his demo. Now I could see how a master handles all that yellowish green.

Thank you for reading my blog!!