The Jen Evenhus pastel workshop with the Austin Pastel Society

"Gerber Gala" pastel by Jen Evenhus

Jen Evenhus' workshop is called The Beauty of Imperfection. What a great workshop this was! We got to watch Jen create this most awesome floral painting, that she must have really loved herself because she put it right up on her website home page!

As far as workshops go, I must say that this was one of the more challenging workshops I've taken. That's a good thing! In my experience, the more difficult they are, the more I learn. Frustration in effort is productive in the long run. I mean, no-one but Jen Evenhus can paint like Jen Evenhus! Trying to brings on frustration, but in the trying are also included valuable things like discovery and exploration. Artwork cannot improve without occasionally moving into the unknown.

Jen is an excellent teacher. She has a well-organized and very fast-paced workshop, with lots of timed exercises on color theory and technique, and she has really good handouts! I learned a lot and have one half-way decent landscape to show for it (See "Orchard" on my Daily Paintings Blog!) which was started in the last hour of the workshop and finished at home.

Me, I'm more of a visual learner, so I took lots of pics. Here's her opening demo on Saturday morning:

photo and thumbnail sketch

 She chooses her pastels in advance.

Her drawing with charcoal.

I found it absolutely amazing how she can get such a dynamic, intriguing, colorful composition from such a, well, really sort of mostly ....boring photo! I've got thousands of photos in my files that are equally as interesting. This was really inspiring!


And, her Sunday daisy demo "Gerber Gala", I gave the pics to my son and he obligingly put together this short slideshow vid:

Thanks for watching! Enjoy more of Jen's work and find out about her workshops at jenevenhus.com.

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