Fine tuning my art skills with "Mastering Composition" course with Ian Roberts

I had a brain-changing experience that surprised me into becoming artistic. A simple 15-minute exercise in drawing my hand was so transformative that I have been teaching it to others for decades and posted a video lesson online https://www.kiegerl.ca/events-and-workshops.html . It was 'contour drawing' - just draw the outlines of exactly what you see. Suddenly the world was full of beautiful simple lines - hills, trees, plants, people - they were all just lines and after a few minutes of sketching there was a picture.  Amazing!

Then I added watercolour paint to the sketches and suddenly the world was full of so many beautiful colours. When the paper got too small for my paintings (and too expensive to frame), I tried the colours with acrylic paints. However, acrylics dry too fast in our desert climate for my painting speed. Oil paints solved that problem - slow drying and easy to correct. 

This week I started an online course called "Mastering Composition" which is about seeing the shades of grey that make up an image and then arranging those patches of grey into an interesting picture. After a few weeks we will learn to see all colours as variations of grey and then I will understand how David Langevin's blue, red and green paint can make a buffalo look so fabulous. 

The best thing about art is there is always so much more to learn that I will never be finished.