I am teaching two workshops this year at the Portland, Oregon Art and Soul Retreat. The first on is on April 11, 2023 and called Watercolor Nature Journaling. I will be teaching techniques for how to paint animals and plants in small format for your journals.
ART AND SOUL Portland, Oregon
Tuesday, April 11, 2023
WATERCOLOR NATURE JOURNALING
ART AND SOUL Portland, Oregon
Tuesday, April 11, 2023
WATERCOLOR VILLAGE ESCAPADES
Join me on an artistic journey! Learn how to transform your own travel experiences into paintings. Finding inspiration from urban sketching and using our colorful watercolors, we will paint scenes in and around quaint Italian and French villages.
ITALY!
My next watercolor workshop in Orvieto, Italy will be
May 18-27, 2024
Our trip May 2022 was so much fun that we all agreed that we wanted
more, more, more!
So Michelle is offering a 10-day Italian Watercolor Workshop just for me and my students! Stay tuned for more information about painting in Italy, 2024
Stay tuned for Bend, Oregon Local Classes! My studio is still in the process of getting a facelift!
ART AND SOUL Portland, Oregon
New Dimensions with Watercolor
October 19, 2022
In this workshop, I will teach you a variety of artistic ways to use watercolor paints with water-soluble and permanent inks to create several paintings. I will show you my techniques on how to create loose and colorfully watercolor paintings.
ART AND SOUL Portland, Oregon
Painted Postcards
October 20, 2022
The iconic, humble postcard has long been a treasured greeting sent by travelers to their loved ones back home. You can create hand-painted postcards as a special gift, a page in your watercolor journal, or even mail them to yourself as you travel along your journey and put them in your journal when you return.
ART AND SOUL Portland, Oregon
Watercolor Journaling for the Traveling Artist
October 21, 2022
Using watercolors and mixed media, we will create color-filled pages of art in our travel journals. You will learn many techniques for preparing pages using watercolor, office products, and mixed media to capture your favorite moments of your vacation time. We will practice doing some quick sketches, pen and ink drawings, and watercolor paintings.
ART AND SOUL Portland, Oregon
New Dimensions with Watercolor
October 19, 2022
In this workshop, I will teach you a variety of artistic ways to use watercolor paints with water-soluble and permanent inks to create several paintings. I will show you my techniques on how to create loose and colorfully watercolor paintings.
ART AND SOUL Portland, Oregon
Painted Postcards
October 20, 2022
The iconic, humble postcard has long been a treasured greeting sent by travelers to their loved ones back home. You can create hand-painted postcards as a special gift, a page in your watercolor journal, or even mail them to yourself as you travel along your journey and put them in your journal when you return.
ART AND SOUL Portland, Oregon
Watercolor Journaling for theTraveling Artist
October 21,2022
Using watercolors and mixed media, we will create color-filled pages of art in our travel journals. You will learn many techniques for preparing pages using watercolor, office products, and mixed media to capture your favorite moments of your vacation time. We will practice doing some quick sketches, pen and ink drawings, and watercolor paintings.
The Portland Art and Soul Retreat workshops are coming right up! Right now I am focusing on getting ready for my Watercolor Toolbox workshop. It is for beginner and novice watercolorists that want to improve their skills and learn useful watercolor techniques.
We will cover how to properly set up your palette, techniques for adding watercolor to paper, how to build up color with the appropriate paints, and how to use pigment value to create stunning paintings. I will even show you a secret way to fix a painting! Using our newly learned skills we will paint some small paintings. Your examples and paintings can be bound into a journal creating a toolbox of ideas for future reference.
Here is the link to sign up for this workshop: Art and Soul Retreat
Many of my students will remember the excitement we felt when we saw the Van Gogh exhibit and the MONET exhibit at the Carrieres des Lumieres in Les Baux de Provence, France. Carrières de Lumières is the former quarry now a center for immersive art displays. It is a projection that typically lasts about 35-40 minutes, repeating a loop throughout the day. Once you have paid the entry fee, you can stay and watch the loop as many times as you like. Carrières de Lumières is the largest fixed multimedia installation in France. The 50 foot high walls are the backdrop that 70 video projectors use to broadcast images.
Well guess what! The Van Gogh exhibit is coming to Portland, Oregon! Beyond Van Gogh Portland: The Immersive Experience – ON SALE!
It will be touring in many other cities as well: Beyond Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience
If you were lucky enough to paint in France with me, you will remember how awestruck we were at seeing this incredible, colorful event. You may want to go see it in the US!
Watercolor painting is fun and easy to do while traveling! I am planning my next watercolor workshop in Orvieto, Italy, May 22-28, 2021 with Adventures in Italy. I thought it would be fun to treat myself to a new palette. People often ask me what colors I use and how do I set up my palette. I want to share with you the best way to set up a new watercolor palette.
The MEEDEN Empty Watercolor Tins Box Palette Paint Case is perfect for creating small paintings and sketches on the go! It holds 12 Pcs Half Pans of paint. Just squeeze your favorite colors into the 1/2 pan, let it dry, and you are all set to paint while traveling!
A few scenes from my traveling watercolor journals:
The fun part is deciding which colors will go where. I always use a color wheel to figure out where to put my colors. The first thing to do is to pull out the tubes of color that I want to add to my new palette. This will take some time and careful thought.
THE COLORS ON MY PALETTE
If I have to narrow my choices down to 12 colors, this is probably what they will be!
Lemon Yellow
Cobalt Blue Teal
Manganese Blue
Cobalt Blue.
Phthalo Blue
French Ultramarine
Quinacridone Purple
Permanent Rose
Permanent Red
French Vermilion
Permanent Orange
New Gamboge
These small, quick sketches of European village scenes are fun and easy to do. I try to make them simple. They are a great way to try out different colors and values. And of course, I can always use drawing practice. Perspective is important in these little sketches so think about the angles of the doors and windows. Make the doors and the windows in the foreground bigger than in the background.
Start with a simple pencil drawing. Add a colorful watercolor wash over the buildings. When this is dry, start adding layers of color to get a variety of values.
I will often add pen and ink to my village sketches.
Liven up your landscape paintings with simple, interesting objects. In this painting, The Road Less Traveled, I added some fence posts and flowers along a country road. They all point to the snow-covered Mount Bachelor located in the Cascade mountain range.
When adding fence posts, I made sure to have a light side and a dark side to each one. The flowers were added at the end of the painting and are loose and representational. Following the rules of perspective, I painted the fence post larger in the foreground and smaller as they disappear into the distance.
The Road Less Traveled is one of the new paintings that is for sale at the Red Chair Gallery in Bend, Oregon.
Located in the Old Town Historic District in Bend, Oregon, on the corner of Oregon Avenue and Bond Street in the O’Kane Building. Red Chair gallery offers the finest in art and contemporary craft.
Don’t Worry, Be Happy! I will be teaching the Secret to Colorful Neutrals in my Wonderful World of Color workshop at Art & Soul Portland, Sunday and Monday, June 20-21, 2021 : https://www.artandsoulretreat.com/retreat-pdx21-5543…
