Cheerful and Colorful Paintings

Cheerful and Colorful Paintings in Oil, Acrylic, Mixed Media and Collage
nancystandlee@sbcglobal.net

Monday, November 2, 2009

Fealing Lin Watercolor Workshop ~ Watercolor Portrait ~ by Texas Daily Painter Nancy Standlee

Self Portrait by Nancy Standlee
11" x 15" watercolor

Fealing Lin, N.W.S., from California was at the Artists' Showplace Gallery for a 5 day watercolor workshop October 26-30, 2009, on landscape painting but we had a delightful one day devoted to portrait painting. I am so glad as I did the above painting on Wednesday and my cityscape and landscape are too pathetic to post and are headed to the turkey pile for a future coat of gesso. Trees are just not my thing and all my buildings lean but I haven't given up. (Fealing has a web site but it is under construction at the present and when it gets online again I'll post the url so you can see her other lovely work.)

Fealing is a traditional watercolorist and she desired for us to have fun and relax and gave us some tools to apply to all mediums, stressing not to paint objects and hold on to the biggest brush as long as possible. She used a 3", 2" and 1 1/2" brush for most of her landscape and cityscape painting. She doesn't always squeeze out fresh paint and her palette was not pristine nor did you find her wiping it out after a few strokes. The choice of a photo is very important and she designs her compositions from several photographs, wanting a strong light and shadow pattern. Black isn't on her palette and she prefers mixing her darks, likes painting on a nearly upright easel and is not narrow minded about her pencil lines. She doesn't paint within the lines but lets the color "invade" other areas and in the beginning stages of a painting she wants her work to look messy.

I met Fealing in Italy at a Ted Nuttall portrait workshop in 2005 and it was a treat to paint with her again and I foolishly thought I'd have at least one great cityscape or landscape but think I'll stick with people for awhile. She uses a separate palette for her portraits and begins with a very light wash of several colors over the entire paper. When I discovered we'd do a portrait, I took the easy way out by painting myself and not alienating friends by taking a timed photo and sent it to Sams to be developed into an 8 x 10 and left off the glasses and some wrinkles. Since I'm in need of cataract surgery soon, maybe I'll be able to throw the glasses away. In any event, anyone will need dark, dark glasses to view my cityscape and landscape. I think Fealing is glad I'm not posting them so they won't be connected in any way with her name.


Slide Show:
Mouse over for captions and some of the photos were quickly taken and were reversed in the overhead mirror. I used F. L. for Fealing Lin and just Class under the student's work instead of giving individual names. The watercolor portrait by Fealing was a start and is not finished and she will email us the completed piece. We were just so very fortunate for her to include a day of portrait painting for us.



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7 comments:

jgr said...

Hi Nancy,
I love your self-portrait! I also appreciate the info you included about Fealing's technique and how she begins her paintings. I am always more comfortable drawing and I sort of 'freeze up' when I start to paint, but I feel encouraged now.
Thank you!!

Nancy Standlee said...

Dear Jgr, Thanks for your nice comments and Fealing really stressed at the beginning of the painting work loose and don't pay any attention to the drawing lines. It's hard to do and something I will work on again. In the Liz Hill workshop it was stressed also.

Terry Banderas said...

Nancy--

You did a beautiful job on your self portrait. Thanks for sharing all of your information.

Nancy Standlee said...

Terry, thanks for the blog visit and I'm glad you like the portrait.

Nancy Standlee said...

Thanks for the visit and I did visit your abstract blog and enjoyed the story of Madame X.

Karen M Schmidt said...

Hi Nancy,
Your self-portrait is beautiful! I love the colors and the movement ... great style!
Thanks also for sharing your workshop experiences ... Some years ago I had heard that advice: "use the largest brush possible for as long as possible" to keep the painting loose. It's so hard to do!
Great job on this!

Nancy Standlee said...

Karen thanks for the blog visit and I enjoy writing about the workshops. Stay turned.