Dan Schultz Workshop in Colorado Springs

Right about a month ago, I went to Colorado Springs for some mountain biking and a workshop with Dan Schultz.  The workshop was a 2 day event with the first day covering plein air landscape painting and the second consisting of portraiture from life.  I was mainly interested in the landscapes but figured I couldn't go wrong by extending myself with some portraiture. I really admire Dan's use of color and he typically paints higher key than I do so I thought some exposure to this would be good for me. Dan took us to Bear Creek Park in Colorado Springs for the first day.  He did his demo then turned us loose.  I had previously been trying to paint some on my own in the days before the workshop and found myself stymied and frustrated.  I think the lack of humidity played some role in that as I could make out detail on mountains I knew were several miles away.  I usually respond well to watching people paint and I think this day was no exception.  I don't think I did anything stupendous but it was a huge leap over what I had been doing the day or two before!

 

 

The painting above was my first of the day and it really leveraged on Dan's demo.  I am unaccustomed to seeing purple in mountains here in Arkansas.  You really only see that during certain times of the day.  Dan likes to isolate color using a pinhole technique and when I did that I clearly saw the purple.  The pinkish purple here is what I thought I saw but it is probably weighted quite a bit too far to the red.  I thought about changing it but decided to stick with what I thought was really there.

 



 

Dan challenged me with the notion of painting clouds and as I studied them, I became entranced by the idea.  I really like some of the work here in this one.

 

Late in the afternoon, I decided to go down to the creek side and try to tackle this.  I knew it would be hard but I've done scenes like this before.  I only had about an hour to work and I got a decent start on the stream.  I finished the rest from pictures in the studio.

 

Not surprisingly, I didn't produce anything the next day I feel like showing off.  But I did learn a lot and hope to give portraits a try again in the near future.