Lisa Blackshear, founder of the Asheville Urban Landscape Project group (now Asheville Plein Air Painters), presented an inspiring demonstration from Zealand. The location overlooks downtown Asheville and is a great place to paint the urban view!
Blackshear shared many tips about tools, styles, her approach to a painting, and concepts about art in general. She also shared her reason’s for starting this very active paint out group. …. and the day was beautiful!
Summer’s Last Days
Don Osterberg, who provided the wonderful gallery photos (see below) said, “What a fantastic lesson we had this morning in painting with oils at Mills River Park. Eddie Morris had us transfixed for 2 and 1/2 hours as he explained his recently learned techniques. This approach most likely can be used with almost any painting medium. Thank you Eddie for a great morning. …” (Note you can see about 20 minutes of the great demo by going to bottom of this page.)
Eddie himself added: “We had a lot of fun yesterday at my demo in spite of wind knocking everything down! Here is the painting (at left) after an hour or so in my studio today to finish it up. Don has a pretty good picture of the block in (see below) from yesterday. Today, I anchored the shadows and added some variety in the light areas and some half tones being careful not to upset the unity of the painting.”Note: An article about Edward Morris appears in the September 2019 issue of the local magazine Bold Life.
There was a great turn out for Sandra Moore’s watercolor Demo. She did a lovely painting of the gardens, with the house in the distance.
Bee Adams said “A beautiful representation of the place & that day. Thank you for sharing your process so well.”
The day was warm & humid, but the group found the shade and produced some wonderful paintings … view the gallery (https://ashevillepleinair.com/gallery-2019/).
Thank you Robert Selman of the Blue Ridge Day Lily Farm for allowing our artists to paint at such a beautiful location. He has some amazing Day Lilies!
A number of APAP braved the unpredictable weather for this month’s Demo. Bee Adams presented us with a lively and colorful acrylic painting, drenched in exotic summer color! She gave us many helpful tips about using acrylic paints & her personal color theory. Also interesting was her set-up and how she used it.
The venue was lovely and varied, something for every artist to focus on. And …. the rain held off and some lovely paintings were produced. Check out the gallery.
Richard Oversmith was our May Demo artist. After the Demo and a morning spent painting, the artists came together for a wonderful lunch prepared by Chef Ricardo (owner of the farm).
Sandy Moore’s comment about the demo:
” I was very interested in how and why he chose his subject to paint.” … “He chose a backlit subject, then added the light shapes of the flowers against the dark background, then he deleted shapes to simplify the painting. He is an excellent demonstrator! Something for everyone…even a watercolor painter.”
Photo by Don Osterberg
Ben Hamburger launched our 2019 season with a great demo at the French Broad River Park. We also had the first truly beautiful spring day with a great artist turn out.
Ben started by blocking in the under-painting in acrylics. His subject was a tree, with character, by the river. He finished the painting in oils. Ben was very gracious answering all of our questions. We had a wonderful painting day.
Mitchell Lee Kolbe ended our Paint-Out season on a very high note!
James Cassara’s comment:
“Did this one (see Gallery for James Cassara’s painting) right after Mitch Kolbe’s terrific demo on Tuesday. Very different approach for me, far more reliance on Earth tones and even using a bit of Mars black. But I am over all pretty happy with the results.”
Brian Murphy believes in the basics.
Sandy Moore’s comment “Thanks for sharing your unique way of painting with us. The simplicity of your set up is amazing.”
He feels that you don’t have to have the fanciest equipment to produce great paintings … and he proves it! A cigar-box easel, gator board backing for his canvas, inexpensive brushes and a very minimum pallet! He also knows how to pick his scenes! A great paint-out at Montreat, North Carolina.
Summer is drawing to a close and the days are getting milder. Jim Carson presented a lively demo to a full house at Magnolia Park in the Montford district near downtown Asheville. There were a couple of glitches, including a truck and trailer parking in front of Jim’s subject! But all in all much to learn from this talented painter!
Early July and the APAP group was down in the French Broad River Park in Ashevile. Where there was plenty of cool shade and Terrilynn DeBreuil charge up the artists with her lively pastel demonstration. She inspired us all! Watch some takeouts by clinking the link to “continue reading” below.
