Susan Roux Workshop 2012

Monarda

Original oil painting  18x24"

by Susan Roux

You're invited!

I'll be teaching an oil painting workshop in August and would love it if you'd join us in three days of fun with color! The focus of the workshop will be on Color and Value and it's purpose with regards to design.

It will be three days packed with exploring color. Come stimulate yourself as we dive fearlessly into luscious color! Learn to add excitement to your paintings while remaining in control. 

Do you fear color? Are you having trouble with color harmony when using too many? Are you limiting yourself for fear of not achieving harmony otherwise? How about neutralizing? Is making mud a problem? 

Then this workshop is for you!

I'll be explaining many properties of color to help you understand it, thus help you keep it in control. 

Free yourself by allowing your inner creativity to unleash on canvas. Learn to add visual excitement to your work. Let your paintbrush dance on the canvas. Don't be so preoccupied about staying within the lines and achieving harmony will become an ease. 

I'll encourage you to apply paint in various ways to help you expand your choices of brushstrokes. We'll be working wet into wet. As the paint gets thicker on the canvas, we can begin to push and pull paint around. Drag your brush, twist your brush, just let it dance on the canvas! Free your spirited energy to just pour out.

Depending how tight or loose you want to keep your paintings, I'll show you how to bring this burst of color into shape. Color and value work together to create the illusion of light, depth and form. As a unit, they can help direct the viewers eye around the canvas, adding power to the overall design. 

This workshop is intended for all levels. 

Come to Maine during the dog days of summer and deepen your understanding of color!

Hope to see you soon...

For further information click here.

Note: You may remember seeing the distance in this painting. It was posted in February before the entire painting was complete. This painting is at Blue Hill Bay Gallery in Blue Hill, Maine. For purchasing information, please contact Peter. 

Playing with mud

Morning Fog, Monhegan

Original oil painting  24x18"

by Susan Roux

When Don Hatfield came to teach his workshop here a few summer's ago, he showed us how he mixes paint on a glass palette. Forget the palette knives. He took his stiff bristled brush, dipped in several colors and turned it in circular fashion in the center of his palette. With that mess which appeared like mud, he showed us how he could move the puddle from warm to cool and back again by simply adding a new color to it. As he continued to demonstrate, the mud puddle grew and grew. You can mix anything in here  he told us. 

Much to our surprise, he demonstrated portraiture using this puddle of mud!

Since then, I have to admit I've learned to embrace the puddle. I even have my students using the puddle. There's something interesting about mud. All those neutralized grays... Subtle in their own right, yet clearly distinctive added to the canvas. It's amazing how many different shades of neutral gray one can make. 

Hatfield (that's what he likes to call himself) told us of his early studies with pastels. He learned to add color to a gray toned paper. It worked beautifully. In time, when he began to paint, he brought this knowledge to the canvas. I've never seen anyone like mud as much as he does. Where many fear creating muddy colors, he becomes the master in control when it happens. And just as with pastels, colors sit beautifully on mud. 

As I painted Morning Fog, Monhegan it's all I thought about. Mud. So much mud. I was painting an entire scene with muddy colors. I found myself lost in the slight variations I could create. I was being seduced by it. I was pulling and pushing shapes. My first strokes for the flowers were a simple diagonal swish of hot pink. It was a flat area of color. As I worked in the flowers, I was making decisions about which one's came forward and which ones would recede. And when they did recede, which flowers would be furthest back.

I watched my canvas evolve as I played with mud on my flowers. I felt in complete control. If I wanted a flower to push further back, I had the ability to do it in a instant. Frankly I'm surprised I finished this painting. I was having so much fun being the master of my flowers, it's a wonder I finally stopped. 

It's easy to paint drama with strong sun/shadow patterns. It's also easy to create drama with dark and light values as seen in my previous painting. What I was after here was to see if I could create some drama without any of those things. No sunshine, no high contrast areas, just mud and a bit of pure color. 

Do you ever try to challenge yourself with something new? If so, what? Do you enjoy getting out of your comfort zone? I do. It can be lots of fun. 

Note to Don: My deepest condolences for the loss of your dear sweet wife, Janey.