3 Marla Baggetta Workshop Demos at IAPS 2015

Sunday June 7, the final day of the IAPS pastel convention, I had Marla Baggetta's one-day workshop. I had seen a painting of her's at the 2011 IAPS pastel exhibit and wanted to learn from her ever since! Marla is well known for her series of 100 variations of the same landscape (done on a dare, she says!)  Well, what an incredible learning tool that is! In her workshop she demoed another landscape done with three different preparations. The first one was direct on a solid ground (paper). The other two had quite different underpaintings.

 She starts her paintings with simple thumbnail breakdowns of the basic shapes and values. Then chooses the size and shape she wants for the scene. (These thumbnails were for a different painting, but you get the idea..)

Demo #1 (on Art Spectrum Colorfix paper I think..)

 This second demo had a "notan" underpainting of graphite washed in with alcohol.

Demo #2

 Demo #3 started with a vivid watercolor underpainting. (#2 and #3 are on Wallis Professional paper - yes, the old good stuff! Marla very graciously had some sheets that she offered to the workshop students for their paintings that day if they wished..)

Demo #3

It was amazing to see how very different the three paintings came out. But she was using the same reference photo for all three!

Here are some of her handy teaching tools; color scheme charts and tiny sample landscapes painted only with the colors shown on the swatches...

Lastly, a glimpse of the back table and some of the paintings she had for sale!

I bought one of her smaller paintings. This one's about 9x5 inches. Dreamy!