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John Cosby Workshop Day 5 - This morning Cosby quickly demonstrated painting a tree, using large interesting shapes, capturing the personality of the tree. Then all 15 of us fanned out to locations within the Laguna Canyon park that sits a 1/4 mile from Cosby's studio. After the morning of painting we all went back to his studio for a critique. Not the typical critique, Cosby explained how to critique your own work and with each painting explained how the painting could possibly be improved. Everyone left feeling positive about their week long efforts. In fact there was a tearful group hug at the end, a tribe had been formed. Here are a few of the reoccurring themes of the critique: Watch for predictability, vary the shapes and create randomness. Make sure your trees are grounded with some dark. Avoid sharp contrasts near the edges of the canvas, Interrupt repetition. Small jumps in value creates the feeling of air. Subdue one area of the painting to streighten another areal. Provide an area of rest. Make sure the sky matches the light in the painting. Does the painting convince you of a story? Finally Cosby must have said 20 times, you have to give a little to get a little. I would highly reccommend John Cosby to any painter that is looking to improve. He is one of those instructors that can identifiy your level and weaknesses quickly and offer a path to improving your work, all in postive notes. He has so much to offer, I look forward to the next workshop that I am able to attend.
Oil on Linen panel, 11" X 14"
Day 4 John Cosby Workshop - Listening to Cosby speak, sparks pop off in my mind of an idea surfacing and becoming fully illuminated. As an example today the discussion was on creating distance in your painting. Here is the gem: When a structure (tree, pole etc.) that is close to the viewer passes over the distant mountain, soften the edge of the mountain on either side of the structure. Almost to the point of obliterating the edge. Cosby demonstrated this on his painting and the increased feeling of depth was ten fold. Gems are flowing constantly from Cosby, here is one more, simple but amazing true. If you are seeing a problem in your painting, solving the problem area directly isn't always the best solution, sometimes it's better to change something else that relates to the problem. The demonstration for this was Cosby felt his clouds were too green. Instead of changing the cloud color, Cosby put some additional green in the palm tree up in the clouds and that solved the green cloud problem. A real TA-DAA moment.
Oil on Linen panel, 8" X 10"
Day 2 John Cosby Workshop -
Today Cosby started with a demo on composition. What was most interesting was his discussion on leading the eye of the viewer without being obvious. To punctuation his point he lead us through the William Wendt exhibit at the Laguna Museum, picking examples that clearly demonstrated lovely S compositions that actually worked as a circle too, so that the viewers attention never left the canvas. Cosby suggested that all of us read "Composition To Outdoor Painting", by Edgar Payne at least once a year. He explained that each reading you will discover new information that will help us all on the journey to understanding of how to paint. Cosby demonstrated a painting from on the path overlooking the ocean, and spent time reinforcing the concepts from Monday, along with a "palm tree" lesson. The one line about trees that was most enlightening was, to paint the growth pattern. Simple as it sounds, if you move your brush as any plant life grows your painting will already be headed in the right direction. We saw great examples of this in the Wendt exhibit. One last comment, the William Wendt exhibit is breathtaking, if you have the opportunity GO.
Oil on panel, 9" X 12"
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