Hello 

Last Tuesday I gave a demonstration at the Glenview Art League and the unthinkable happened...I forgot my demonstration painting including the photo reference at home. I couldn't believe I forgot it and suddenly went into panic mode. Lucky for me I had an example of a painting that wasn't painted on the back which I could use to demonstrate on. I am also lucky that I have a photographic memory so I could redraw the sketch really fast so I could do the demonstration that I planned on doing in the first place. It all worked out and in the end many of the artists watching said that they enjoyed seeing how I worked it out from my memory.
You can see that painting partially done in the photo below. 

NEW WEEKLY CLASS... I am back to teaching in Long Grove after many years away. I use to teach at the Hilligross gallery/school, but now I am starting a new Monday morning class at the Rivellino School of Art.
The class is a watercolor and or an acrylic class. Classes start next week and they start at 9:30, end at noon, the cost is $25.00 per class and they are pay-as-you-go classes.  Here is their website, the class is so new it isn't on their website yet.
Please contact the school (847) 383-6673 or me to let us know you are coming. 
the address is 350 Old McHenry Road, Long Grove, IL 60047

This week The Lake Region Watercolor guild meeting has the artist Rosalie Vass as the guest demonstrator. For more info on that meeting go to LRWG.ORG

Happy Election Day!

David

YES TO  CLASS at the Civic Center in Libertyville on November 10th
YES TO  CLASS at The Studio in McHenry on November 12th at the NEW building

NEW! YES TO CLASS at the Rivellino School of Art  in Long Grove November 14th

It is that time of year when you finally don't need to paint green trees and green grass, autumn brings the artist so much beauty to paint. The problem with this type of scene is that there are so many leaves and trees to paint. The answer to that problem is to simplify all the objects into large value patterns.

To turn a scene with many objects into a large value pattern of lights and dark you can do it in two ways.....

1. Squint your eyes and look at the image to see what the large light and dark values are. Squinting eliminate the colors making you see the large values.

2. Instead of squinting you can do the same thing digitally by taking a B&W photo and then posterizing the image to break down the picture into 3 major values. This is demonstrated below. 

Below you can see how I used photoshop to make the image B&W and then I used a posterized filter on the B&W photo to turn it 4 large values which in turn gives me large areas of simplified values. This makes it easier to paint scenes like this that have so much detail.

The painting above shows how I simplified the leaves and trees into simple large areas of light and dark.