Painting Landscapes workshop Saturday, June 25

Knights Valley Trees (in cyan, magenta, and yellow - a printer's palette) • © 2010 Karen Lynn Ingalls

Now that the hills have turned golden, it's one of the best times for landscape painters in California. If you can stand the heat, anyway....

We'll have the best of both in this Saturday's Painting Landscapes workshop. We'll be inside (and there is a cooler!), working from photographs. Working from photographs is definitely different from painting outside. The light doesn't change every five minutes (or less); you don't have to deal with heat, wind, and inclement weather; there are no passersby who stop to watch you at work and engage you in conversation; and no birds will drop a critique on your work.

A photograph can be limiting – and it can also be freeing. Knowing what the photograph's limitations are, and replacing those limitations with memory and imagination, it can be a springboard to a whole new creation. For me, painting from a photograph is a freeing thing. Just how to make that happen in your own painting is one of the things we'll be covering in Painting Landscapes. I'm looking forward to it!

And if you're out driving around, keep a camera in your car. You never know when you'll spot scenes that call out to be painted....