Plein Air Painting in Ojai, CA

Description - Join me in this fun and invigorating 5 day plein air painting workshop. Learn the time-honored traditions of painting outdoors in the gentle Ojai countryside, conveniently located just an hour's drive from Los Angeles. The small, picturesque town of Ojai is Southern California’s best kept secret. It’s located halfway between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, just minutes from the Pacific Ocean. It has wide open cattle fields bordered by distant mountains, waterfalls pouring from craggy rock cliffs, undeveloped natural hot springs, forest rivers and stony creeks. We will be using the historical Beatrice Wood Center for the Arts in Happy Valley as our meeting place and general headquarters. The aim of this workshop is to teach you to interpret the landscape in terms of paint, using light and color to create form. Color relationships, design/composition, simplifying and the benefits of painting outdoors will be discussed, as well as how to design and build a painting that carries an emotional impact. We will focus on values, shapes, edges and color as well as paint application and materials. I will offer a brief demonstration each day and advise on a one-on-one basis in the field. Additionally, there will be class discussions and critique of work so that participants will learn from individual instruction as well as each other. In the event of inclement weather students will work indoors using landscape reference from their I-Phones or Tablets.