February 2025

A painting retreat

The hall at Samish Island Retreat Center

Last week I spent three days at a painting retreat with about 30 members of Northwest Watercolor Society (NWWS). We were hosted at Samish Island Campground and Retreat Center, a church camp.

Three days of uninterrupted painting with other watercolor painters is a painter’s dream. We didn’t have to cook, clean, or be distracted by the myriad everyday tasks of home. All we had to do was paint.

I set up my mini-studio at a table next to other painters and made about a dozen paintings. I was especially stimulated seeing the paintings of my fellow artists, and learning from them. For some reason, I felt freed up to experiment with new approaches to painting. When I finished a painting, I taped it up on the wall alongside the paintings of others. The wall was filled with all manner of watercolors, a delight for the eyes. Everyone was very kind and supportive.

A painting I made at the retreat

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Painting portraits

Portrait for Sktchy

There’s snow on the ground, and my art studio is warm and cozy, so I’ve been staying inside and concentrating on painting portraits. I’ve been inspired by the book Painting Portraits in Watercolor by Charles Reid. In his book he lays out in detail his method of painting portraits. I’ve read and re-read the book, and painted all the exercises and examples, many of them more than once.

Reid lays each stroke of paint very deliberately, then softens the edges to make it blend smoothly. He likes to have half the edges in every portrait be soft edges (where one color blends into another without a hard edge). I’d like to paint like Charles Reid.

I find most of my subjects from an app called Sktchy. In this app, users upload photos of themselves, then everyone is invited to paint or draw a portrait from that photo, and upload that to the app. There are literally thousands of photos to choose from.

I’ve painted about 40 portraits in recent weeks. Here are some of the better ones. Click on an image to see the slideshow.

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