Today was the first day of the Jill Steenhuis workshop. Her approach to plein air painting is very different from what we do here. Jill lives and teaches in France, and has studied and taught for the Cezanne and Van Gogh schools there. The biggest difference in what she does and what I do is the palette... I use limited, she uses a very expanded palette with at least 2 version of each color. I found myself staring and my palette most the time and thinking WTF.
It was a great day. We spent the morning mixing this palette and then, in the last hours of the day I whipped these pieces out. I found myself slipping back into my old brush habits, but they are pretty engrained. I have no problems with the work I am doing now, I need to learn as much as possible since they do not teach this style of painting at any school, I certainly didn't get it at SCAD or high school. I usually roll what I learn from these things into my own thing. I am very curious to see how this workshop manifests itself. in my work to come.
I can sympathize, I have become very comfortable with my limited palette as well. Sometimes pushing out of our comfort zones gives great results though and I think these paintings turned out really well.
ReplyDeletetrue, sometimes you need a kick in the pants!!
ReplyDelete