Workshop: Lisa Takahashi - Painting a Vibrant and Expressive Landscape

One of those workshops where every single person in the room was enabled to produce something fabulous in their own style.

Lisa began with a slide show of landscapes in various styles ranging from John Constables’s dramatic sketch of rainclouds over a beach to Ivon Hitchen’s dramatic simplification of shape and colour in one of his woodland paintings. She discussed brushstroke effects, colour choices and composition.

She followed with a series of warm up exercises centred around our picture references:

• non dominant hand outline drawing of the reference

• tonal drawing of the reference

• 4 tiny composition studies of the reference - not to copy but to edit the reference into the best plan for the painting

• we then went to colour mixing to make decisions about the colours - not to copy the reference but to come to a harmonious set of colours to express the mood we wished to create

  She then urged us to under paint in bright pink or another bright colour just to give the picture some extra zing..

  We spent the rest of the day painting our own pictures, while she painted hers, occasionally circulating to give individual advice and encouragement, and encouraging bold, loose painting

  It was very, very satisfying day with lots of valuable learning. Lisa is an excellent teacher.