Nancy Nowak Fine Art

UnGreen- 2 Day Workshop in Kiawah/Seabrook,SC

Just got home from teaching a 2 day pastel workshop titled “Un-Green”. Come spring, our landscape is filled with green. Green trees, green bushes and foliage, green grasses. If we paint everything we see, we end up with a green painting. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing but can make a very boring painting. It is up to the artist to interpret the landscape, and to bring out more subtle colors and hues to make a much more interesting painting.

This is done through analyzing the “perceived” color, how something appears under the influence of a particular color of light and to the many warm and cool neutral tones observed in nature. Artists are more interested in perceived color over local color. “Local color” is the grass is green, trunks are brown, sky is blue. “Perceived color” is seeing the violets and blues in the foliage and trunks …and yellows and pinks and violets in the sky.

Started off with a pastel underpainting washed down with alcohol to set-and now starting to add some color

Seeking Shelter
9 x 12

I couldn’t have asked for a more beautiful area to teach than the Island of Seabrook in SC, at the Todd and Huff Art Center, about 20 miles from Charleston. My hosts, Pat Huff and Laura Todd, were an absolute delight and a joy to hang with! I arrived a day early and stayed a day after to go painting plein air with Pat at Magnolia Gardens and Shem Creek. Surrounded by the grandeur of Spanish Moss trees and marshes, this area is a true inspiration for artists.

While I was there did 2 plein air paintings.

Shem Creek
9 x 12 pastel

Spanish Moss
9 x 12 pastel