Loosening Up: A Class with Dale Popovich

© Robin Edmundson (with Dale Popovich), 'North Woods', watercolor, 12 x 16 inches

April 28th, I attended a class with Dale Popovich in Bloomington, Indiana. He did two demonstrations in the morning and we did a paint-along in the afternoon, one layer at a time. I learned a lot from him and was reasonably happy with the finished piece. 

His style of teaching is very fluid. He is able to talk as he works and as a group of experienced painters, we had a lot of questions about his process and thinking. He is very generous with information and it was a pleasure to learn with him. As we were painting, he would walk around and give feedback - the most valuable to me was, 'STOP painting now. Let it dry before you work it more.' I was happy to see that he would pick up a brush and actually show me what he was talking about on my piece. It was great to see exactly how he uses the tools. 

The composition was from a reference photo he provided and we all painted with the same colors in roughly the same way. Since the purpose of the activity was to be loose, I didn't worry about making it look just like his, I worried about making it look right given how the paint moved for me. I added more bold color in areas and focused on finding shapes and volumes that appeared for me. Yes, it was intense and I came home pretty wired. I jiggled things a bit more the next day and then STOPPED. It's in a frame now, safe from over-working.