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 Keyhole Rock
© Marian Fortunati
8" x 10" Oil On RayMar Linen Panel


The above title is the mantra with which Calvin Liang started each day of our painting workshop.  He also talked about the importance of good drawing skills.  He reminded us that before we drive a car, we need to put on our seat belts.   Before drawing we need to think about the composition otherwise it's dangerous... just like not wearing a seatbelt.  You must make decisions before beginning to place in your shapes.  Shapes are more important than color... Get the drawing right... get the shapes right.

Don't just make a shape.... make a beautiful shape.  Don't just put in color... put in beautiful color.

Calvin did a wonderful demonstration painting of Keyhole Rock.   He used the same methods as in previous demonstrations except when developing his texture he added in a lot of paint using a palette knife.  He laid it on really thickly as you can see in this video clip:

Calvin reminded us again to be careful to vary everything...  vary the shapes and their positions, vary the values within the shapes and the colors as well.  Make sure that the edges had hard, soft and kissing edges.   There is a really great visual description of Calvin's examples of edges on Jose De Juan's blog post about his experience in Calvin Liang's workshop.   Take a look at it HERE.

This is Calvin's finished demonstration painting. 

I painted two small paintings in the afternoon.   The first was of that same Keyhole Rock that Calvin had painted.   Even though the weather front was coming in and the air began to get quite chilly, I felt pretty good about it. 

Calvin thought my colors and values were very good but he reminded me that the foundation of all good paintings is the drawing and he suggested that I practice a lot more.   SIGH....