Vianna Szabo workshop at IAPS

While attending IAPS last month I had the pleasure of taking Vianna Szabo's workshop on painting children in pastel from photos.  She gave a nice presentation from her laptop and took us through some preliminary steps in her demo.

She starts out taking up to 200 photos and likes to work on UArt 400 grit.

She started out with a sketch for placement on the page and to find the large shapes and angles.

With her reference photo handy, she started by filling in the background.

She then went to the shadow areas first.....

Never blending with her fingers, she was always aware of color temperature and value.

This was as far as she went with this portrait.

I particular found it fascinating that she selected all of her colors before starting, dividing them into three values of Dark, Medium and Light.  She looked at how all of them looked together to determine color harmony before painting.

The workshop was just one day....I started painting a portrait of a young boy I had photos from a previous photo shoot.  Following her method was fascinating and much looser than I normally work.  I highly recommend her workshops.

To see more of Vianna Szabo's work click here.

More on my IAPS adventures soon.....

Kim Werfel

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