It has been interesting reading this thread.
I like the photos here and the stories. I'll still read some pages but mean while I write about my learning experiences.
Ok, few words about my art education. I have participated some oil painting workshops and atelier. Since everyone is adding photos I also add some I did in the workshops/classes.
My first ever oil painting/art class was a workshop in Italy, Florence. It was a landscape painting workshop and lasted one month. The organizer was the Florence Academy of Art. I was very beginner to oil painting and it was difficult to stand next to the good painters but I learned a lot.
(I can't find the photos of the paintings from that trip but if I do I'll add them here later if it's possible to edit.)
The following year I went to another workshop to Italy, Umbria, with few other artists that I had known in the earlier class. I was given false information and thought it would be a still life workshop but it was landscape again. The teacher was one of the head teachers in Florence Academy of Art (different than earlier year´s teacher) and I learned more from both the teacher and other participants who actually were art teachers themselves too.
This is getting boring but ... next workshop was in Italy again with a teacher that is one of the leading plein air painters in the world now and was already then and makes his living by selling art in New York and elsewhere in US the past 10 or 20 yrs so this workshop I chose not by location but by the teacher that truely masters plein air. I again learned a lot and had fun. Made life time friends and have met some later in Europe painting plein air together. I still repeat in my mind this workshop teacher´s advices when I paint and use the materials that he uses. The plein airs below are from Marsillana, Italia. The 1st one is Orbetello. The castello is Corsini Castle. The ancient churches are in San Bruzio in Toscana-Grosseto.
Then the story makes a turn because I was in a situation that I didn´t know what to do: I was measuring in my head if I should go back to my first profession, engineering (work hard and be rich), or continue with art (work hard and be poor). My husband thought I should continue with art and so I decided to go to an art school full time student to Italy again. The school is an atelier actually and it´s name is Angel Academy of Art and it´s located in Florence. I went there to do the full program but I haven´t finished it. Here I add some works I did while I was there: 3 pencil Bargues, pencil Old Master copy, life figure drawings (long poses), and some charcoal cast. All below. We did there a lot of drawing and homework but I can't post it all:
Last fall I participated a brand new local atelier here near where I live (only 7 minutes drive from my front door) which is profounded by a Florence academy teacher and I wanted to learn what I missed in the other atelier in Florence: to draw a cast with charcoal properly. The ear was a struggle and was never actually accepted as a finished work. I continued this year in January painting a cast with oils but the classes were stopped in March because of corona virus restrictions. Below you can see the charcoal cast done in a local new atelier here near me:
In between those workshops and classes explained above I went to a short two week lasting portrait painting workshop to Atelier Madrid, which in Madrid, Spain. It was all very good and I learned a lot. I have done portraits with the method I learned there. This workshop was in December and I was enjoying not only the wonderful atelier classes but also the city of Madrid with all the Christmas stuff all around. Here's the life painting we did of the very good (she didn't move a bit in two weeks!) model Marisa. mine became a little too dark in color because I hadn't really painted portraits before so I had no idea how to handle light, face, color or anything. I just followed teacher's advice.
After that I participated a portrait painting workshop to Seville, Spain. Again the teacher is a world wide well known artist but that was a big mistake because he didn´t want or come to teach me nor the lovely Sevillan student next to me at all. We asked the teacher to come and teach us too but he always said ´no, I have to be over there now´ and he never came to us. We were puzzled and didn't know why. Well I painted this portrait below by watching the Spanish student on my other side painting hers with instructions and plenty of help from this teacher. She had almost the same angle to the model so I could follow her at least since the teacher didn´t want to teach me. This workshop was only a short 5 day thing but it was frustrating. I haven´t taken workshops from artists after that. I don´t dare. Below is the painting I did in this catastrophic workshop:
Now I´m painting landscapes and portraits by myself with this kind of ´education´ background. Still life I´m now learnig on an Internet class by a teacher I admire but we have classes only few times per month. I feel I'm learning a lot with him. Just wanted to share with you all how did I learn art.
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