Napa Workshop 2010 - Day 3

Day 3. We spent the day painting at Domaine Chandon. The grounds of this winery has some really neat features including a nice pond with boulders and willows surrounding it. Calla lilies and Irises dot the perimeter of the water, which gave me an idea to do a demo on painting water and reflections.

There really is no secret trick to painting reflections. If you just paint what you see, you end up with a good depiction of reflections. I did talk about what to watch out for, and painted this view to make my point. Many of the students tackled reflections in their paintings, and found that it required a subtler value control than expected. Distinguishing value from saturation proved to be a challenge to some, while remembering that sharp and soft edges have purpose gave trouble to others.

But this stuff is not limited to reflections, it's just that painting reflections forces you to pay closer attention to some of these things because if you don't, it doesn't quite work.

We got there around 8:30, and tourists were already arriving. Can you believe it? Wine tasting at 8:30 in the morning? Domaine Chandon houses a high-end restaurant, so perhaps these people were there for Sunday brunch. Fortunately, we were away from the tour path and it didn't really get crowded till much later, so we spent the pleasant morning painting around the pond.

After lunch, we moved over to the back side of the winery where shady oaks dot the hill and we had a nice view of Yountville and surrounding areas from the hilltop.

Better yet, Julia, our waitress from the restaurant showed up as promised, and we promptly set up a figure session. There was a big boulder under a gnarly tree and I thought of posing her in something reminiscent of a Deal Cornwell illustration, but of course she had to hold the pose for 25 minutes at a time so we did something easy.

Still, it was such a treat to actually have a model that those who decided to paint her (most of the students) really got into it. The last day of a three-day workshop tends to get a little low on energy typically, but with a beautiful model to paint, I think the creative juices kept flowing.

I was going around helping people so I didn't get to paint her myself, which was the only regrettable thing. I was so itching to paint! Julia had a really striking Italian(?) look to her, and the natural ease in her demeanor showed through even when she wasn't doing anything. I'll have to hire her at some point and do some paintings on my own time.

We pretty much took over the back parking lot. Some had to stand in the sun but it wasn't hot, thankfully.

Not everyone painted the model. Just down the hill, Donna, Mark, and Gail painted the hill side. This view had a neat little combination of a boulder in the foreground, dirt road, grassy hills, distant hills and mountains (atmosphere!) and a tree in the midground just begging to be the focal point. Mixing different greens was the main challenge here, but it was a good challenge.


All in all, it was a really great workshop. Location, people, and weather make the workshop, and I got all three this time. Lucky me! I hope everyone enjoyed themselves as much as I have and learned a thing or two in the three days we had together. I can't tell you how great the wine tasted after all was done.

I'm really looking forward to next year!! I hope you can join us. If you're interested in participating in next year's Napa workshop, or in any other future workshops, please make sure you're on my mailing list. (link in the sidebar) The spots fill up pretty quickly - this one filled up in three hours! By the time I put it up on my website, it's usually filled up.

What's next? I have a panel discussion with Kevin Courter and Alfred Harrison on Thursday, April 29th at Holton Studio, on the subject of California landscape painting tradition. Should be interesting!