Margaret Dyer at Richeson School & Art Gallery, Wisconsin

This is going to be stream of consciousness writing. I'm taking a break from homework right now. I have to figure out a better homework method instead of this last minute stuff. Last semester I blocked in Monday & Wednesday mornings for homework. Maybe I should block in Tues and Wednesday mornings? I'll try that next week.

This weekend I attended a 3 day workshop taught by Margaret Dyer (http://www.margaretdyer.com ) at Richeson School & Art Gallery, http://www.richesonart.com in Kimberly Wisconsin and stayed at the Appleton Inn, http://www.theappletoninn.com . What's really funny is that a lady who's in my Monday night class also attended this workshop and we never mentioned it to each other.

The Appleton Inn is on Prospect which sort of curves around into Appleton/Oneida into College which is then a straight shot over the river to Eisenhower(take a left, it's the traffic lights after 441, you see McDonalds), then take another left at the stop sign just past the Hilton Inn, go straight then make the right hand curve where Kennedy and Marcella (frontage road) meet. It's the second driveway on your right.

Richeson is a distributor of art supplies, plus they have a school and gallery. Their gallery is real cool and open to the public so anyone can visit when they are open. Terry & Annette run the workshops in addition to all their other responsibilities. Our class got a tour of their warehouse and manufacturing area on Friday which is an off day as the people work 4 tens. Pretty cool to see the millwork area where the easels and other wood products for artists are made. (The sawdust is collected to give to a local farmer for animal bedding.) We got to see the machines that cut the paper and make sketchbooks. Peeked in the paint and pastel mixing room. Saw the machine for filling paint tubes. You can buy empty paint tubes. Plus saw all the warehouse storage. Very clean and organized. We also got to eat chinese take out dinner the first night at Darren and Michelle's house. They are super nice people, their house is very lovely with a lot of paintings hung on the wall, plus Michelle is an artist and we got to see this gigantic oil that she is in the process of painting. There is bit of an ice problem and lack of salt availability right now so people put rugs over the ice on the sidewalks.

Prior to attending the class since I am a beginner and really didn't have any supplies, I ordered their $250 workshop special package of 72 unison pastels, 10 sheets of Unison premier pastel paper (five 16x20 & five 18x24), compressed charcoal stick and small pkg of vine charcoal. This package contained everything I needed for this class. I did bring my own masking tape for taping the paper to the backing board. We worked on large, sturdy upright easels. They provided us with backboards. Then at the end of class they gave us a present of 3 unison pastel sticks; white, gray & black plus 10 sheets of 9x12 shale unison paper. Did you know that the static discharges if you let plexiglass sit for a minimum of 2 days after removing the paper? Then you don't want to handle it too much to prevent the static from building back up.

Margaret Dyer was an excellent teacher. The first day we got a half day demonstration. I think she uses LaCarte Pastel paper and started with pressed charcoal. Margaret using a 250 watt bulb on a long pole so you can really see the contrast between light and dark. Her basic work flow is:

1. gesture drawing, looking at the curve of the spine, etc.
   
2. 3D form by drawing basic shapes, cubes, etc.
3. check proportions and refine form. She used a bamboo skewer held at arm's length to measure the head and how many heads long everything was. She showed us you could use the head as a unit of measurement to make a grid on your paper to check your proportions. You always measure from the same place. In the demo, she checked head, shoulder blade, elbow and hip.
4. Then she squinted to find the darks and drew their shapes to block them in. Squinting is very important. You got to squint all the time. Then she just started alternating cool and warm darks until the darks were the right darkness compared to the darkest area emphasized with black.
5. Then she squinted to find the lights and drew them in as blocks. Again alternating between cool and warm lights. She used the side of the stick a lot to draw in the areas.
6. Last was the middle tones to round the forms and blend if needed the light and dark areas. Again working back and forth between the cool and warm middles tones. Sometimes the dark and light areas of the model blends into the dark and light areas of the background. Sometimes it's a sharp edge.
7. Then she refined everything.
   

After that we started painting. Margaret helped me a lot because I had no idea how to work with color. I can see light, dark and middle tones in black & white but in colors it was difficult. So she helped me back picking 3 pinks in light, medium and dark and 3 greens in light, medium and dark. So I basically used those 6 colors plus a little black and white and it worked out pretty well. I need to go through my pastels and figure out the tones of all the sticks. I still need to figure out how to apply pastel better, not in such a sketchy manner. I like to sorta just scribble but by doing that I don't get the painterly appearance. I get a sketchy appearance. I'd also like to practice that grid thing. I bet I could do the same technique with a still life.

Pastels are very messy and their is a lot of pigment that drops on the floor under the easel. You keep the easel vertical to let it drop off your painting. Lot of people got pastel on their faces. I did OK because I used to work in a paint lab developing, making and applying paint. So I basically used my right hand as my messy hand while keeping my left hand as my clean hand. The last day I was tired and dropped my pastel sticks a few times. They break when they hit the epoxied cement floor. It probably would be a good idea to make a trough to catch the dust and stand on a washable rug to keep the floor clean along with hopefully preventing your pastel sticks from not breaking when you drop them. A lot of people wear vinyl gloves. This lady who lives in the area but previously lived in washington turned me on to gloves in a bottle, http://www.glovesinabottle.com . That works real well so I bought some from Richeson. This stuff is fragrance free which I really like. Richeson has a store area so you can buy stuff you need for the workshop and add it to your tab which you pay up at the end of the workshop. You could bring your lunch in but I paid $9/day for lunch, 1st day was subs, 2nd day was sandwiches and 3rd day was pizza. Plus in the morning they had coffee, fruit and donuts. At lunch was chips, cookies and fruit. For sure they was water in bottles. I don't remember if there was soda or not as I don't drink it. There was plenty to eat and we had food left over.

Also if you ever go to the appleton/ kimberly/ oshkosh area, see if there's room for you at The Appleton Inn. The proprietors, Carole and Gordy are extremely nice. Carole is a painter also. If you're lucky she'll show you some of her work. Plus she extremely talented with interior decorating. The inn has a Victorian theme with quilts, etc. that she created, very restful, but their upstairs living area is modern. She also quilts and teaches quilting classes. Gordy and Carole have totally remodeled the inn. Gordy is very talented on the computer. They were very busy originally so didn't set up their website, but we looked at it while I was there, it's php driven and it looks like once he learns php he'll be able to make any updates they need when they need it.

I really met a lot of great people and expanded my horizons. There's a whole new world out there that I am getting a glimpse of.

OK, enough goofing around. Back to homework