Since I didn't take the before photo right before a painting was painted on and I may have done things after it was worked on and the lighting was different I'm not sure that you can see that much of what was happing but here goes . . .

Click on any image to see it larger.

Vladislav Yeliseyev 3 day workshop

The first day we tried painting at what should have been an interesting spot with boats (The sailing school) but it was extremely windy and very cold. Finally we went out to where there were rows of boats on land and the path to the water was blocked so it wasn't so bad. I looked 'round and saw a sailboat up on blocks or wheels or something and decided to try that.

At some point I took a photo (I've found it is a good way to get a different perspective on what I'm doing). (L) And at some point after that Vlad came and actually seemed quite taken with my painting and painted on it to show me some things. (R) He is always so delightfully enthusiastic about it . . . as I recall he clarified some areas mostly by darkening them.

The next day we went to a funky place called Cortez. Again at some point I took a photo (L). Vlad painted on it not too long after I took the photo as I recall. He is really good at making slashing horizontal bold, dark strokes, single strokes so they are clean and look like they are meant if you know what I mean. (R) is photo after he added some darker values and horizontal tie-it-together strokes.

We returned to Cortez for the last day as well. This is the time that he said he didn't want to touch my painting because I have my own style (I'm thinking he meant established) and he didn't want to mess with it. The image on the left is as I did it. The one on the right is cropped as we all agreed it needed to be (the light had changed and things moved and whole water area was getting away from me). I was liking the roof and building, not sure if cropping really helps. This is a place I would like to go back to. There are some interesting buildings but it is also crowded and jumbled and there can be a lot of people around because the restaurant and fish market are popular. Oh you'll like this, there is private property and residents around and some people came out on the public dock where we were and one of them asked if we had a license, I said I had left my "artistic license" in the car. Ha! (she laughed)

I have the impression Vlad likes my style and my colors.

Barb and I walked on the beach at Siesta Key . . . I like this photo I took (all these photo were taken on my phone), the sky is pretty cool don't you think?

And we all went and walked 'round a place called Selby Gardens. Larger than Sherman Gardens but much smaller than Huntington Library and Gardens. I took a couple of photos of Barb. They are mounting some interesting exhibitions that couple art with the gardens. They rearrange or change the gardens to complement the artist. They did Chagall last year and the greenhouse in particular was interesting. They are getting ready to open one on Warhol, the (flower) factory. I'm going to try to get by to see it, and hope Jim will come too, it is a nice walk (Selby Gardens is where I had the tea I sent you and thought it was the best iced tea I'd ever tasted.

I took this photo on the lanai, I liked the scene and was thinking if the photo was evocative enough perhaps I could paint it . . .

Morgan Stanley Price 3-day workshop — oil

The weather was better, not so windy nor so cold. We went the first day to a little park called Payne Park. It is has a great circus themed playground for children and two lakes. About one of the lakes, the one we were painting around, a variety of birds cluster and fly in and out so it is interesting. Having said that I'd been there before and don't feel all that moved to paint there. I was not happy but not despairing either of what I was painting. I was finding it exceedingly difficult to get a thin line. Morgan painted on my painting to show me things a couple of times I think, hard to recall. What she was showing me was understandable and clear to see but she wasn't painting what I was painting so that muddied the clarity and was, ok, annoying to some degree. (L) is a photo I took earlier on and (R) is one towards the end. She added the dark reflection of a tree which I wasn't putting in because when i started it wasn't showing up in the water like that and I was trying to be faithful to that time. She also added the light greens around things in the upper part of the painting. She was showing me how to make one thing distinct from another. It seemed like I kept going back and forth between not having the right darks and then having everything seem dark.

The next day we went to a place called Linger Lodge (there was a restaurant and boat launch and rental slabs for RVs and a great little turning river called the Braden River. One thing here "everyone" wants you to have a umbrella and not have your back to the subject in an effort to keep the sun off your paper. She said she knew an artist who goes to various "paintouts" who when asked how he choses his subjects said he looks for the biggest deepest area of shade and sets himself up there and then decides what to paint. So with that in mind I selected a non-water view of someone's stuff on a picnic table with a cool Norfolk Island pine, all delightful light greens and other vegetation. Got everything ready and whosever space that was came and parked their truck in front of my scene (%!##$). Anyway I regrouped, still in the shade, headed Morgan off, and started anew. When she came by she said my horizontal plane was not sending a clear message and then painted on my painting to show me. Again it was clear to see but it did not seem to fit with the rest of my painting. Maybe it is that it takes getting used to, she kept saying to most of us that the lights were much lighter than we were making them. Photo of mine at some point (L) and après Morgan (R)

The last day we went to Myakka State Park to paint a, as she put it, wonderful tree. It was right next to the Myakka River and it was a pretty spectacular old and broken tree. This is where there were alligators across the river and later one big one on our side! (we all moved) On the left is my painting. During critique she took a brush and was blending or moving paint around on my painting (upper left is one area) to show how a sampled area (one value) was better than too many values, saying that she could see where I was going. I did in fact think that the painting suddenly acquired an overall feeling of being greenly under trees. (R) (by the way al of these are small 8 x 10)

Here are a couple of photos of Barb at Myakka. I do not have any photos of her paintings, sorry.

On Barb's last night here we all walked around the Ringling (Museum) grounds at sunset. We wound up on the terrace of Ca d'Zan (Ringling's Venetian Pallazo) and I took a couple of photos. They are looking up at a small plane that was going 'round and 'round practicing touch and go landings.

And for good measure here is my "practice" painting. I did it in my studio looking out the back windows across the pond. It is on oil painting paper (Arches) 9 x 12

sorry for typos and badly worded sentences, I think you'll get the idea . . .

https://yeliseyevfineart.com

http://morgansamuelprice.com