Workshop with Judy Mudd

A couple of weeks ago, I took a workshop on cityscapes with Judy Mudd, who came up from Louisville for the day to teach us a bunch of tips and tricks.   As always, she was friendly and engaging and full of knowledge and encouragement.

This is what I painted that day.  Cities are not my native habitat, so this was an exercise in architecture and in light & shadow.  I'll take what I learned and use it to paint more of my favorite rural subjects.

I had a lot of fun learning how Judy does people and cars and I was happy to be able to practice in this piece.

I've taken workshops with Judy before and as always we had a great time.  If you get a chance to take a class from her, do.   Her 2 or 3 day classes taught in Berea, Kentucky are wonderful!

You can see Judy's award-winning work HERE.

Painting Class with Judy Mudd

In my eternal quest to become a really good painter, I took a class from Judy Mudd in Berea, Ky earlier this month.

It was amazing.    I'd never done a class like that before so I decided to go with the flow.  She had done a lot of prep before hand, chosen the reference photos and worked up a finished painting so we knew what we were aiming for.  

We spent a lot of time gathered around her easel watching her demo, then back to our own work, then back to demo, back to ours, etc. a section at a time.  

Here's the thing.   When you take a class like this from a gifted artist and teacher, she brings out the best in you.    I do not paint as well as I painted in this class, yet every pencil mark, every puddle and brush stroke in these paintings is really mine.   I painted these...and was stunned afterward that I did.

We painted this one the first day.  There are some things I'd like to fix, but I tried a bunch of new stuff and it looks pretty OK.  I was really happy with it.  [And truthfully, the best thing about this is the rust on the silo.  I invented that rust - it wasn't in the reference photo.  I love that rust.]





The second day, we did the white house on the curve [above].   A bunch of stuff clicked and I was amazed at how successful that piece is.

Here's the other thing.  Now I'm kind of scared that I won't be able to do my own stuff that well.  Yeah.  So I've pinned these up in my space to remind me of what we did.   I have my class notes out and open so I can refer back when I need to.   And I'm going to keep on painting.