Painting Flowers

A few weeks ago we took a painting class with  artist Joelle Goff in Jackson, NH at the Jackson Art Studio.  We had noted Joelle's work in local restaurants, in particular her larger paintings of flowers.  So, when there was a class offered to learn to paint flowers with her, we jumped at the chance.

We arrive early on a Saturday morning, selected one of several photos she provided and went to work.  We worked with acrylic on canvas.  She had us practice on a small version of our piece first.   We learned to mix color, add background and put the basic structure in place. We had ONE hour.

We then set out with a larger canvas to put into practice some of the techniques we learned.  She was very helpful, but we had to work on our own. This was a bit different that the "sip and paint" experience we had before, where the process was structured and included a great deal of guidance.

Joelle was very encouraging and reminded us not to expect a "finished" work.  The purpose of the class was to learn mixing color, seeing structure, putting structure down first and working from the area of detail outwards.  Indeed by 4pm when we were out of time, and loosing steam, we made a start but did not have a "finished" piece.

It was a lot of fun!  We learned a lot and look forward to returning to the pieces we started too add a bit more detail, and maybe even trying again with a blank canvas.

Of course it was a beautiful day, so after class we drove the short distance to Pinkham Notch for a hike with Zealand that offered views of fresh now on Mt Washington and Tuckerman Ravine.