Painting with the group  (photos courtesy of Mike Coverdale)

These photos are from our retreat at the Coverdales’ farm home earlier this month. The “Coverdale Art Institute” all started with Mike giving Judy a Christmas present of painting with me for a day. Their home was a retreat for me out in the country, and we had such a fun time we decided to try it as a location for workshops.

Students worked from my painting “Summer,” shown at bottom right  (photos courtesy of Mike Coverdale)

This workshop started by painting watercolor techniques on a pop-up card, something to remind the painter of the lessons taught. St. Francis came along with us and became a swish of paint in many colors to demonstrate value, keeping it simple. Then we were ready to paint from one of my paintings (“Summer”) and I showed them how to start with a loose and juicy background and coming forward with the farm house and more detail. By then we were laughing about the farmers and chickens, having fun.

Left:  Painting from nature  (photo courtesy of Mike Coverdale)
Right:  We saw a dragon in the shape of this tree  (photo courtesy of Bonnie Dix)

One of the artists painted some trees from looking out the window, so we all decided to get up and go outside to study subjects to paint in May when the buds will be on the trees with the far-away farm up the hill.

Followup:  We had such a positive response that we had two more retreat days, one in May and one in July. Many thanks to everyone who participated!