The Color Of Shadows

The last two days have been challenging for both of us as we tackled a new aspect of painting.... the colors of shadows with Pastel Artist Liz Kenyon. http://www.lizkenyon.com/ Liz demonstrated how shadows are the midtones of the painting and actually are not black, but have colors reflected from the sky or their surroundings. After discussing the different kinds of shadows, Liz gave a demonstration and then everyone practiced on a painting of their own. Liz (on the far left) is discussing the painting that Martha is working on while Allan is busy on his own painting in the foreground. The workshop is being held at Brio Fine Arts which holds classes and workshops all year for students in all of the arts. The second day we again worked on a photo of our own choice and tried to incorporate all of the techniques that Liz had discussed. Here I am working on a painting of a goose. One of the best things about taking a workshop is meeting all of the people are are working towards the same goal. All of us were striving to be a more inspired artist and it was good to be able to talk with others and hear how they were coming along. Finally, here is a photo of Liz with one of her paintings. This is an example of rowboats with the color of the shadows reflecting the sky and the water and the sunlight. Now we must try to practice some of the new principles that we have just learned. And we also learned that our photos have to have subjects with shadows.