| Abalone And Radishes © Marian Fortunati 9"x12" Oil on Canvas Panel |
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| Click on the link above for additional information. |
Classes With David Gallup
I've been taking classes off and on from master artist, David Gallup. Every time I'm there, I'm entranced with seeing his work in progress or being immersed in a stimulating conversation. He currently has a terrific show at the Carnegie Museum in Oxnard titled, "David Gallup- Beneath the Surface: A Closer Look at Our Oceans"
It's a fairly long drive out to David's studio and especially when gas prices were so far up there, I often wondered WHY I go out there. But invariably when I get there, I know why.
David is an artist who paints what he is passionate about. He's full of information and full of life and enjoys sharing it all with friends and students. I never know what we'll paint until I arrive. Sometimes there is a model, sometimes we paint something he sets up. There are often unique subjects for still lifes. We once painted a Mako shark's head... (It was his birthday and one of his students thought it would make a great present to bring it to class as a subject to paint).. It was. This year for his birthday the class went to Catalina to paint. I couldn't go and I'm sad that I missed it.
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| The set up | |
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| David's demo |
The Abalone Challenge
Last week he had set up an abalone with radishes. He told us that in this class he wanted to focus on transitions. (I thought that was serendipitous because my recent newsletter was titled "Transitions"!) I have missed many classes this year because of one thing or another, so I hadn't painted the abalone yet. Most of the other students had. But David has said that he would want to paint it 100 times... just to learn how to paint it. After discussing a few paintings that other students had brought in from a recent workshop that David led in Alaska, we got to work.
I blocked in my 3 values in raw umber as David had taught me. He suggested that the light value on the left side of the wall should be the same value as the inside of the abalone, which I hadn't really realized. But I quickly fixed it and then started mixing my paints. As David has demonstrated many times, I mixed up several piles of color with the same value -- some leaning green, some pinkish, some blue, some reddish, etc. Then I started layering in the color. I was feeling pretty good about what I was doing. Most of us had a pretty good start and then David sat down to do a demo. We all stopped to watch. In about 45 minutes he completed a wonderful demo that it took all of us 3 hours to do.
A few Davidisms:
Here are some of the "Davidisms" that I remembered to write down:
- Where you find ambiguous areas, [in your painting] you need to embrace them. Use them as an opportunity for transitions.
- Don't impose your brain on the painting.
- We're only going to look at the lit side of an object to determine local color. In the shadows you can play with color as long as the value is right.
- Connect objects to their environment. (Mixed colors of radishes and cloth and shell.)
I love learning. I love listening to David explain painting, color and other work. It was a terrific day.
By the way... I have a little 6x6 painting on the Daily PaintWorks Auction. Currently it's REALLY a steal! Check it out before the auction closes (pretty soon). Maybe you'd like this little gem called,
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