Hello 

Welcome to the FLOAT-YOUR-PIGMENT Newsletter #22 

October 9-13th, 2017 is a long way off, but that date was music to my ears last week when I was contacted by Cheap Joes to do a workshop for them on that date. Mark your calendars because in 2 years you definitly want to take this workshop. I hear amazing things about workshops at Cheap Joes and how wonderful the place is along with the wonderful people. Get yourself a 2017 calendar and mark down that date, it's going to be the best!

If you can't wait that long for one of my workshops, no need to worry, next year I have a bunch of wonderful workshops planned. There is, of course, the Greek Island workshop, the Santa Fe Expo, The Vermont Art Event and Dillman's in Lac du Flambeau and then the closer to home ones that I will post when more info is available on those.

There will be NO class on Thursday in Libertyville this week
There WILL be class on Saturday at The Studio in McHenry!

Happy Painting!

David

Yes I'm quoting the Hunger Games...I love listening to those books on tape when taking road trips to my far away workshop destinations. The odds they are talking about in the Hunger Games is not the same odd I am talking about when composing your picture. When I talk about odds in watercolor composition I teach about using odd instead of even to create`informal composition. For instance, instead of putting 2 of the same size objects in your painting, bring good balance into your painting by putting in a odd number or make the 2 uneven, for instance make one object small and the other bigger making it uneven. Use 3 objects instead of 2 or 5 instead of 4. however when using informal composition make sure your painting has good balance.
Work your composition like it is on a scale, don't weigh down one side over the other.
Then there is Formal composition, which isn't as popular as informal, but also creates good composition. Georgia O'Keeffe worked a lot of her paintings using formal composition, meaning you use a bullseye effect, where your center of interest is usually close to the center of the page and you weigh both sides the same, one side somewhat reflects the other.

My painting above would be an informal composition. See how I used 3 main people in the painting instead of 2. I am always aware of this balance when composing my compositions.

The Painting above was done by Georgia O'Keeffe, and if you look at many of her works you will notice that she uses formal compositions most of the time. 

Neither way is right or wrong, they are just ways to compose a painting. But in both ways there is always a Center of Interest and that center of interest is the first thing that the viewer will see when looking at your painting.

To learn more about composition you can get my first book, that was published by North Light. It is no longer being published, but you can still get copies at Amazon and Ebay. 

In last week's newsletter, I showed off a few of my works that I had done in my second year of watercolor class at the American Academy of Art. I decided last Saturday in my watercolor class at The Studio in McHenry to redo one of those paintings to see how I now would handle the painting. The painting on top was done for a class and probably took me all class to do, the bottom one was drawn and painted as a demonstration and took18 minutes to paint. It's great to see how one progresses, something I invite you to try, repaint some of your older works.