Nancy Franke Workshop

Last weekend I was at a wonderful workshop with Atlanta artist Nancy Franke. It was a two day workshop at The Art School in Sandy Springs and it went by very quickly. It was a fun packed weekend of demos and experiments. Nancy has great positive energy and a great style. The first exercise we did was paint with paper towels-no brushes(picture 3). You can see the looseness from the paper towel and plus the time crunch we were under. It was a great way to loosen up. The 2nd exercise we did was paint a still life set up and we had around a hour left in the day to do this. I like the looseness of the edges around the teal vase and the leaves(picture 1). The 3rd exercise was another still life we did on the 2nd day and it was a pear and lemon slice(picture 2). I have found when I paint a pear that I either paint it right the first time or have to scrap it off and paint it 5 or 6 times, which was the case that day. Another student, Marilyn bought this painting, which I thought was nice. If you have a chance you I recommend taking a workshop with Nancy.

Tranquillity 16 x 12 on Panel

This is a follow-up painting to Solitude. It is a more contemporary yet old masters style of painting. I wanted it simple and have a backwards "C" flow to the light and the dark since it was a vertical painting. It leads your eye into the painting. The colors in the painting create a calmness to one's eyes and mind.

San Francisco Street 16 x 8 on Panel

This is the current challenge for DSFDF . It is a scene from the beautiful city of San Francisco. I believe my mother and I might have walked up this street since it felt like we were walking for miles when we went there years ago for a vacation. When we went it was in the month of August and it was cold and they had record rains. At least we can still laugh about it and we had a wonderful time!

I decided to do this painting using a palette knife like the scene a few months ago from another challenge with a street scene from NY. This was a lot of fun to do and a challenge with the perspective of the street, buildings and telephone poles. I think I accomplished what I set out to do in this challenge.

Black-Eyed-Susans 11 x 14 on Panel

We have an area of the garden where there are Black-Eyed-Susans. The gold finches love them and many times they are in there without anyone knowing. I had this painting ready to post for days, but there was rainy weather. Today was the first day that I got a decent, but not perfect photo.