In June 2013, the fifth Illustration and Painting Workhop took place in Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, Mexico. In January of the same year I moved from Mexico City to Puerto Escondido, to try a whole new life style in contact with nature, the thing that has catched most of my attention since the first day. The plants, and everything that surrounds me here is so powerful, that one can only feel small and respectful towards it.
Thats why I chose to focus this workshop in Nature. And almost by chance I met an amazing artist from Riga, Latvia, who was currently painting and living in a cabin right by the sea in San Agustinillo, Oaxaca. His name is Mikelis Fisers and he is for me, one of the most amazing current figurative painters. He had been travelling with his combi looking for landscapes to paint.
Here two examples of his work:
In the end, he turned out to be the invited artist, and he managed to explain in sharp two days the basics of colour theory and landscaping to a group of ladies that had had no contact whatsoever with this matter.
The results where amazing. Check them out for yourself!
Mikelis preparing his lessons.
We had never given a workshop in such an intense heat, but we managed somehow!
Time to go for some scouting in the neighborhood! We need to find a beach with the proper perspective!
Looks like we might have found one 🙂
A kind of abbandoned hotel right at the beach. The only hotel in Puerto right at the sea!
And then, the rain came.
Location for the day-trip: √
Thursday
It was time to pack all the materials, including lots of fresh vegetables, fruit and fish from the market and move to Casa Mayita!
The welcome lunch!
Colour theory was the first topic.
Colours = Happiness
Domi checking out the location…
For the first time a mother and daughter took the workshop together 🙂
First day of the workshop: √
Friday
Good morning! lets have a walk on the beach.
Today we will learn perspective and the basic theory of landscape painting.
To understand depth and layers, we built a model of some classic landscape paintings.
In the meantime, there was a lot going on in the kitchen 😀
Claudia, the quickest painter of the world!
Cynthia, who had never had the courage to paint before this workshop!
Pame with her first landscape exercise!
Patricia, who chose a lake.
Georgina, with her first landscape painting!
Geo, inspired by one of my favorite paintings!
Evelyn who had lots of courage with colour.
Saturday
Time for our day-trip to the beach! It was time to apply everything we´ve learned so far with Mikelis and paint a landscape.
Geo having a break
Work in progress…
Sunday
We focused in plants and flowers, and went to the garden to find some inspiration.
It was time to focus on the detail, and paint a flower or plant as realistic as possible.
Cynthia chose to work in the garden…
We had a youg visitor at the workshop 🙂
And slowly, the end of the workshop came near.
Thank you Claudia, Evelyn, Cynthia, Patricia, Georgina, Geo, Pame and Mikelis for this amazing weekend, and for my 30th birthday cake-celebration!!!!
And BIG BIG thank you´s to Pame, the official photographer of the workshop.
There will be a video very very soon!!!
This was an amazing experiment and the beginning of many workshops in the mexican tropics!
The next workshop by the sea will be in Casa Koru, in Ixtapa, Gro., in 2014.
And to finish, I invite you all to the next Illustration and Carving workshop:
It will be in Mexico City from the 6th-8th December 2013, and we will learn to do carving in linoleum. The focus is Urban Landscape and the invited artist is Germán Flores, currently in charge of the carving section of ENPEG “La Esmeralda”, National School of Art, Mexico City. It is for everyone, even you have never been interested in drawing before.
