Taking a Mixed Media Class with Nick Serratore
I've been taking a workshop with Nick Serratore at Rehoboth Art League for the past few weeks. Yesterday he had us mixing gesso, turpenoid, acrylic, watercolor and pastels for the loveliest impressionistic effects. We worked from one of his black and white photocopies at first and then he had us put that away and work from memory. Interesting!
I thought I would share them with you since this is so completely different from anything I have done up to this point and I really had fun with it. Nick is an award-winning pastel artist who has had many solo shows and I have admired his work since we arrived here in Delaware. He graduated from the Hussian School of Art in Philadelphia in 1990. He's also a heck of a nice guy and extremely patient. Now I hope I can do this myself, without his help and encouragement!
This one I started at home from the photocopy, on scraps of archival mat board, making up the colors - he helped me finish it in the classroom and showed me how to use gesso and turpenoid to soften and blend and how to make the grasses more "wild" and give it an overall impressionistic feeling.
This one and the next were going just from memory - no reference material to look at. Here I blocked in the darks with my pastels - deep blues, rusty reds and browns underneath, then worked with turpenoid and gesso on top, playing with the grasses and ground, scribbling with pastels.
I wanted to try going in a different color direction with this one, lighter, more golden with maybe a glow of sunset in the distance. Underneath the colors were pinks and oranges, building again, with the gesso, squishing the brush around, playing with the pastels. Fun stuff.
I thought I would share them with you since this is so completely different from anything I have done up to this point and I really had fun with it. Nick is an award-winning pastel artist who has had many solo shows and I have admired his work since we arrived here in Delaware. He graduated from the Hussian School of Art in Philadelphia in 1990. He's also a heck of a nice guy and extremely patient. Now I hope I can do this myself, without his help and encouragement!
This one I started at home from the photocopy, on scraps of archival mat board, making up the colors - he helped me finish it in the classroom and showed me how to use gesso and turpenoid to soften and blend and how to make the grasses more "wild" and give it an overall impressionistic feeling.
This one and the next were going just from memory - no reference material to look at. Here I blocked in the darks with my pastels - deep blues, rusty reds and browns underneath, then worked with turpenoid and gesso on top, playing with the grasses and ground, scribbling with pastels.
I wanted to try going in a different color direction with this one, lighter, more golden with maybe a glow of sunset in the distance. Underneath the colors were pinks and oranges, building again, with the gesso, squishing the brush around, playing with the pastels. Fun stuff.
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