In our first day of the Anne Abgott workshop, we painted the “Birds of Spain”. We learned that Anne likes to trace out the elements and then project them to arrange her compositions. Don’t just copy a photograph. Use a black and white version to work out your values.

Shadows have color and reflect the objects near them. In this art shadow colors included Cerulean, Magnanese, and Antwerp blues.
Silver Brush – The Silver Scrubber angle brush is what Anne recommends for lifting out shapes, or softening edges.
Don’t like the color in the photo? Change it! Use a flat angular brush for dark backgrounds… start with Brown Madder, then add Indigo. Paint on dry paper, water on the paper makes it lighter. Cheap Joe’s has a good 1/2″ flat angle brush for backgrounds as well as pulling mid and light values from the darks. Maganite Genuine (Cheap Joe’s) was used to darken the blue shadows.
Make yourself a greens chart with the colors you use. This would come in handy if you are plein air painting!
The second day we worked on the umbrella/tables painting. Start with Verditer Blue, tip in a bit of Cobalt Violet. Paint in the windows with Cheap Joe’s June Bug and Maganese Blue. Paint black behind the cars and around the columns.
The lovely peach color in the umbrellas is a combination of Scarlet Lake and Naples Yellow. Shadows are again the Verditer Blue and Burnt Sienna.
Final day, paint in the background of the glass with Burnt Sienna. Mask the highlights becasue the glass has to sparkle. For the olives the Sap Green and Brown Madder make a great olive green color.
The light gold colors were Naples Yellow and Scarlet Lake, with violet for the deep shadows. The glow in the red/brown liquid is Gamboge Yellow.

Mix greys with Verditer Blue and Burnt Sienna. Glass stem: there is a white shape and light grey shape and then dark shape that connects down into the lower shape that shows the glass shimmer.

Look at all the good students holding up paintings done under the tutelage of Anne.
Anne’s Tip: to get compositions and colors in your photos play with the Hue, Saturation, contrast in your edit tools… on your phones or if you have other editing software available.

She showed us her plant photo in which she dropped out the background and played with exposure, brilliance, vivid, etc. to create a series of paintings.

Ann has a vast library of images to choose from on her phone. Sometimes you can see a great compostion from an old photo.
We all worked hard and learned a lot. It was a wonderful workshop! Thank you for teaching us Anne!

Here are what some of the artists had to say about this workshop:

“I had a lovely time meeting all of you! All so talented and friendly! Thank you to Anne for a great workshop and all those who worked so hard to make it happen. I’m so happy to be part of your group and look forward to learning and sharing watercolor techniques and tips with you!” Louise 

“Fabulous workshop, fabulous artwork, but most importantly, fabulous ladies! Thanks to all who helped make this happen?” Susan 

“I feel very fortunate to have been able to  learn from such a fantastic artist and to spend 3 days with so many fun loving creative gals! Thank you all!!”    Lynell

“Thank you everyone I loved my first workshop!!!!” Debbie 

To see more of Anne Abgott’s work click:

https://www.anneabgott.com

photos courtesy of Pam and Terri