Ryan Mellody Art: Weekend with the Masters

Day two started off the workshops and except for a couple lectures, most participants were in a single class the entire day. Each "Master" spent the morning discussing and demonstrating their painting method which left the afternoon for student participation.

I spent most of my morning watching the start of Rose Frantzen's demo (I had missed the beginning of day one's demonstration and was really interested in this stage). Like a true master, she quickly constructed both a wonderful likeness as well as a piece of art -- I would highly recommend Rose's workshops . . . she just gets "it" and can easily describe and teach what she thinks and knows.

One of the things I took away from her demo was that when she squints down at the subject (to simplify the shapes), she always asks herself a coinciding question. Like "How does the shape of the right eye differ from the left", or "does the hair line disappear" or "are these two shapes the same value even though they have different temperatures." I may do the same thing half of the time, but I bet I'm guilty of just squinting at the subject because that's what "your supposed to do."

She also takes assessment of things as she slowly squints down and opens back up. So, for example, if she wants to find the hardest edge on the subject, she will slowly squint down until all the edges are lost except for one (which will be the hardest edge), and then as she slowly opens her eyes, she will take an account of all the other edges that start to come back into her vision . . . so through one squint, she will know the hardest edge and the others that follow.

Later in the morning, I spent some time in Dan Gerhartz's workshop as well as a few moments in Daniel Spricks. Both are amazing artists -- Sprick starts with a very classical duotone underpainting while Gerhartz blocks in with more local color (much like Frantzen or Burdick).

In the afternoon, my friend and I crashed Rose's workshop and was able to paint for a couple hours. I have to take photos of the paintings, and will try to get to it soon.

The evening event was the much anticipated portrait demonstration of Richard Schmid painting Alexey Steele. If you know Alexey, you know that he can't sit still or stop talking, making it very entertaining to see Richard paint a portrait while Alexey is flailing his arms and giving a 2 hour monologue in his Russian accent. I don't have any photos of the event (my camera battery was needed), but I was able to take a little video -- it's not much but it does have a surprise ending when Daniel Keys and I were goofing off and laughing about who knows what . . .

To wrap up the evening, a bunch of us grabbed some food after the event . . . here are a few pictures of to many people around to small of a table. (notice how we all care about being in the pictures and being "social," but Richard was the smart one and just wanted to eat his soup and go to bed!)