Robert A. Johnson Workshop

Last month I took a wonderful workshop with Robert A. Johnson at the Quinlan Visual Art Center in Gainesville, Georgia. I was so lucky to get in the class because the size was limited. He is such a fantastic teacher. He had studied under a few teachers I had taken from so I thought that would be helpful to me. I had read his book a few years ago and had learned many ideas along with watching one of his videos recently. I mainly decided to take from him because of the way he paints his flowers. Over the years I really haven't painted them because they are intimating and still are to this day. I did learn about painting them, but still need to practice on a variety of them. I would recommend Robert as a great teacher and a wonderful learning experience. He spent time with each student everyday, which doesn't always happen in workshops. That time was so beneficial to me.

The top painting is Robert's demo. The 2nd picture is the set up itself. The 3rd paintings is mine. I decided not to add in the blue design on the vase because everyone who was painting from the demo was doing that. Robert painted the Red Rose on my painting. I was struggling and he came over to help me with it. I let him paint the rose so that I could see up close his technique. The other objects in the painting are mine. This painting is not for sale because I can always look at it to see how he painted that red rose. I do have more paintings to post and will do so in a few days. There you will see where I have started painting flowers.

In some workshops each artist sets up his own still life while in other workshops there are a few set ups and many paint from them. That was the case in this workshop. I prefer to paint on my own set up because then you can get close to it and paint from it. When you have a set up where many are painting from the same one you can't get as close and that is not how I usually paint so I struggle just to see what I am doing. Therefore some of the details get lost when you can't get as close as you would like. In the very top picture you can see where the set up was located and where his easel was located. Very close and that what I do when I paint from home.