Completed My Idyllwild 5-Day Pastel Plein Air Workshop
Great People, Wonderful Sites, Yummy Food, Perfect Weather, and Extremely Focused Color Theory Work !
Thank you, Michael Newberry for ground breaking life changing experience! Grateful! Blessed!
Petia Lilova
Idyllwild is one of the most beautiful places in the world. It is an alpine village above Palm Springs with a few lakes, high desert meadows, no fast food, yet easy to get delicious food, not expensive, and plenty of accommodation options.
Our color theory workshop was four days of making art morning and afternoon outdoors.
The night before we had dinner in my studio.
We worked on the color theory system based on my book: Newberry Color Theory, With 9 of 9 Amazon Five Star written reviews. It really works and at the same time unleashes more of your individual character. There are four main considerations: the color of things in themselves; the color of the atmosphere; the complimentary color of depth and foreground; and the complimentary color of light and shadow.
The format was I would do a demo.
Then I would instruct the process while the students drew. In the afternoon they would try it out on their own. The drawings were done were less than two hours, there is little time to do details, and the main focus was on the color serving the four functions listed above.
The last lesson was how I use the color theory based on a reference photo and one of the live sketches. I also showed how I use a hand-held a vacuum cleaner, tape, and kneaded eraser to edit. The kneaded eraser is used to get back to the pristine paper, while the vacuum and tape are more subtle and leave earlier layers without smudging.
I am extremely proud of my students, they brought their "A" game, worked incredibly hard, stayed focused, and they were extraordinarily kind to themselves and each other. They were also planning, amongst themselves, to do a Fall workshop either in Palm Desert or Idyllwild, I was later informed about it! : )
Michael, Idyllwild, 6/13/2021