The painting class! I’m dividing this into two or it’ll be image overload. Here’s our classroom.
At the end of Day 1 we discussed what we’d done so far in the field.
Thanks to Kat for the following two photos.
This is Carissa and Juliette, no doubt discussing the finer points of painting with your fingers.
Some of my classmates. See the lady in the turquoise jumper and stripey apron (centre)? That’s Rhiannon, one of my roomies. She does amazing things with polaroids.
And this would be me, in the zone.
I took photos as I went along, like I usually do. Of course now I’m in a slight muddle about which layers are which painting….
So here is the first thing we did on the first of our three canvases; get two colours on there, spray some water, smoosh it all around.
Just to get rid of the white, which can be a bit daunting as we know. Then we tried all sorts of different ways of making marks, prompted by Flora and some great music. Flora had us painting on each other’s work too, so each canvas had something we’d all added. (It’s all about the non attachment.) I found this incredibly liberating.
Adding our darkest darks and lightest lights (ie white) to learn about making colours ‘pop’. (I’m totally puking at this stage. Ugly Phase-orama.)
Yay, colour!
On Day 2 Flora made us give one of our paintings to the person on our left, for keeps. This was the second exercise in practising non attachment, and was quite a challenge for several of us I think. Here’s the one I gave away…
And here’s the one I received. To be honest I didn’t find it that hard. Whatever we gave or received was probably going to get entirely covered anyway. (I’m SO zen.)
Like this:
There don’t seem to be a lot of photos of the process of this one.
Here are some pictures of the progression of Flora’s painting, which she used to demonstrate techniques.
We learned really useful things like how to pull a painting together, how to pull out the bits you love and cover what you don’t, and the ‘frosting layer’, which I loved, because it was about finishing a painting which you may know I often struggle with.
Here it is looking almost finished. On the final evening Flora auctioned her painting. I had told more people than I’d realised how much I wished I could win it; I don’t think I really believed I would, after all I wasn’t the only person who would have loved to.
But then I did! I was mucho surprised and quite embarrassed what with everyone looking at me and people going ‘yay!’. I was quite overwhelmed actually. It is already one of my greatest treasures; I will post a photo when I’ve hung it.
Tomorrow the progression of my third and final painting, plus a bit more about the final Gallery Night…
Wonderful, wonderful post. You took so many more photos than I did! It is hard to keep the paintings straight, especially in the beginning. And I'm still SOOOO happy you got Flora's painting. It has such a great home! I would love a copy of your picture when you've taken it, because I have a couple of her work in progress but nothing of the final result, to show how much it had changed.
Hi
Lovely to see all of your pictures and I'm very excited to see the "third" canvas 🙂
Would I be able to use some of your pictures for my own blog when I get around to writing another update! – I'll reference that they are yours 🙂
Love Debbi x
I love all of this–such a great art experience, and very cool where you stayed too!
It's so nice that you got to take the painting home with you. Such special memories! Nice to see the painting studio in action!
Lovely lovely! x
Loved reading this post ! And yes, as Kat said you took loads more photos than me. I was having a little photo break really…and now wish I had a bit more of the process.
Hope you are settling back in to life in Brighton 🙂 Is the painting up yet ? 🙂
Thanks so much for sharing all the photos. I would love to take a class from Flora. I love her paintings!!
Great reading Tara! Looks like a wonderful experience.
Reading your post it just feels like you had the most amazing time…there is much joy in these photos and words and in the paint of course. Glad that you had such a wonderful experience. 🙂
so loving this glimpse into the retreat!
wow..lucky you!! Love these photos and post..
I can't believe you have a Flora Bowley original!!!!! Aaaahhhhh!!!! Amazing!
And I'm loving the paintings you made too, and wishing my workshop with Flora was tomorrow, and not in November!!! 🙁
It sounds like you had a lot of fun, and I sure hope you did. i can't wait to see more…
Wonderful post – I can't wait to read more! Posts about paintings in progress fascinate me.
Ah Tara, you are just doing such a fabulous job of telling it like it was. I am skimming and skipping over it in a heady can't quite speak sort of way. Am linking to your brilliant posts because I am evidently lazy!! xxx see you soon xx
Wow…… i am so happy to read about your journey, reading every step with anticipation and fascination – you see i would so like to attend the retreat next year! So pleased you had an amazing time and i thank you for sharing it with us. By the way, your paintings looked great x
Oh, man this looked like it was so much fun…Amazing paintings, too! Congratulations on winning the painting!