A Great Workshop

Last Thursday, Friday and Saturday I attended the best workshop ever.  Leslie Saeta and Dreama Tolle Perry have very different painting styles so having these two teachers instructing was like going to two workshops at once.

The first day, Dreama demonstrated her painting style and we all used a photo she provided and did a painting using her palette colors.  She has such a beautiful, loose style and her paintings just glow.  Trying to create paintings like hers would take years of practice (for me) but I was pretty happy with the looseness I achieved with my attempt since my painting style is so literal.
Here is the painting I did that first day.

That first night, after teaching all day, Leslie and Dreama cooked a wonderful dinner for us.  It was so nice to spend time with everyone and get to know Leslie, Dreama and the 19 other people in the class  better in such a beautiful, relaxed setting.

On Friday, Leslie showed us her palette knife painting technique.  She put a very detailed photo of 2 boats on our easels for us to paint.  I thought she was crazy!  I was a bit stressed wondering how I was going to paint such a detailed photo, being the "I've got to paint everything I see" artist that I am.  It was easier than I thought and I'm pretty happy with the result.

That evening, Leslie and Dreama cooked another delicious dinner for us.  I must admit, when I first heard about this workshop, the fact that 2 gourmet meals were included definitely sealed the deal and I knew I had to sign up.

On Saturday, Dreama and Leslie had us play musical easels.  They set up a different photo of one of their paintings at each easel and we started at our own easel to begin the painting on a 6" x 6" canvas.  Then, after a couple of minutes, the music stopped and we moved to the next easel, taking only one paintbrush, a palette knife and a roll of paper towels with us.  This continued until all of us had worked a little on each painting.
At the end, we went back to our own easel and they let us do 3 strokes on the painting and then we had to stop.
All of the paintings turned out really well.  I love that I have this painting as a souvenir of this wonderful workshop.

If you have the chance to take a workshop from them, I would definitely recommend it.  They have one coming up in Atlanta in February 2011.  Also, check out their blog, Artists Helping Artists  and listen to their weekly radio talk about marketing your art.