HAPPY HOLIDAYS

HAPPY PAINTING 2012!!!

Filoli Garden in Woodside, CA

2012 NEWS

I am happy to report I have reached two years post-stem cell transplant, leukemia cancer free and will be returning to teach Holiday Travel Painting Workshops in 2012!!! Raffaele Nobile, Tuscany in the Frame has finished the restoration of Villa Nobile in Cortona, Italy. I have not yet seen the finished restoration, but it looks wonderful. The May workshop is filled, but I am also planning a Beginner Holiday Travel Tuscany Workshop in October for the local Palisades residents of Charlotte. Should it not be filled soon, I will open it to my mailing list. If you would be interested, please send me an email. For the beginners, we will be painting in Raffaele's studio at the villa and he will take us to a new site each day.

In addition, I will return to teaching at Filoli garden near San Francisco, in Woodside, California. We will be spending 5 days on one large painting, learning how to collect information plein-air and bringing that information to the studio. We will be concentrating on design and composition. Registration on the Filoli site will open end of January, 2011.

2012 WORKSHOPS

MAY 22 - 29, 2012 Tuscany, Italy (Filled)

September 18 - 22, 2012 Filoli, Woodside, California

October 13 - 20, 2012 Tuscany, Italy (Beginner Watercolor)

Tuscany in the Frame Villa

Cortona, Italy

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TIPS OF THE NEWSLETTER

HOW TO GET INSPIRED FOR THE NEW YEAR
Whenever I need to get inspired to start a painting and feel a little bogged down, a good thing to do is start looking at your stack of painting ideas you have saved over the years or I look through some of my travel photos. Or you can go on the internet and look at images from your favorite artists. After I have done this for a short time, all of a sudden, I can hardly wait to paint!

TRAVELING WITH ACRYLICS and WATERCOLORS
To the left is a photo of a 7-day pill tower (I found this at the Container Store). I am going to use this for traveling with some of my not-so-often-used acrylics and watercolors, so I won't have to take big tubes of these colors. Because it has screw tops, it should work well. I might put a row of masking tape on it to ensure they don't un-screw in flight and pack it in a baggy.

REVERSE YOUR THINKING FOR ACRYLICS: After painting in watercolors and learning all of the 'rules' about saving whites, you decide to venture into acrylics. To use them in the traditional manner, much like oils, you must reverse some of the rules of watercolor.

• Start painting with your transparent, thin DARKS! This is the reverse of painting in watercolor, where darks usually come last.
• You don't have to save your WHITES! They will be applied usually, last in acrylics
• Save your DARKS! This is tricky; it is all about edges. When you paint dark over a light shape, it looks different than painting a light shape over the dark. Do some test samples to see the difference.
• Watercolors dry lighter; Acrylics dry DARKER

This is tough to do if you have been painting in watercolors for a long time, but with practice you will begin to see the difference. Practice, practice, practice.

** You can also paint thin in acrylic layers like you do in watercolor. I treat these two techniques almost as two separate mediums - Acrylic A and Acrylic B - because you must reverse your thinking entirely.

** To the right is an example of how I started a painting in this manner, and an 'almost finished' image. I intend to enrich some of the colors yet.

'Lake Como Reflections', 30" x 30", acrylic

SHOWS TO SEE

American Watercolor Society Traveling Exhibit
February 4 - March 18, 2012
Fallbrook Art Center, 103 South Main, Fallbrook, California 92028
Click here to see a UTube video of the show.

Send me an email for any great art tips, great shows, etc. and I will add them to the newsletter. For more student information, go to Jann's Blog. If you no longer wish to receive my newsletter by putting UNSUBSCRIBE in the Subject. Send to: jannpollard@mac.com

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