Tuesday, March 20, 2018

This Is Finished!


“This is finished!” It was a real rush to hear Larisa Aukon say this about a couple of my small gouache paintings last week at the Scottsdale Art School

There are so many good online resources for learning curves in art, but last week I was fortunate to experience the magic of a “Gouache on the Go” face-to-face workshop with Larisa.

Larisa grew up and was educated in Latvia and now lives in Arizona. In the workshop she emphasized quick paintings on location, using small pieces of watercolor paper (6”x6” or 5”x7”). The paintings can be finished compositions or can be studies for larger oil/acrylic paintings, or both.

She did a few demos and shared some of her tricks, such as how to travel lightly for outdoor painting with just a small backpack. As we painted inside the classroom and outside the grounds of the beautiful school, she walked around and offered sparing but helpful suggestions and comments.

Later I’ll share more about what I learned at the workshop, but for now I’ll just share these two paintings that earned Larisa’s urgent, music-to-my ears comment, “This is finished!”

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