June 25, 2009

Paul Leveille has returned once again to Hudson River Valley Art Workshops to teach his amazing class in painting expressive portraits. He is fluent in oil, watercolor and pastel and does a demo in each.

This is the portrait from his pastel demo on Monday.

Our model that day was Rudy V from Rhinebeck, who is an artist himself, besides being a professional artist’s model.

The next afternoon, Paul did a demo in oil. This time the model was none other than chef Mark, who was in a Texas BBQ sort of mood, so he wore his chocolatier whites but with his black Stetson. This may seem unusual to some, but you have to remember that Mark lived 9 years in Texas and that means sometimes the hat and boots appear in his outfits from time to time.

Here is Paul as he is about to get started.

First he used charcoal to sketch the basic shapes and to establish the position of the features in portrait.

Then Paul does his portrait dancing magic and suddenly the portrait is just about done!

The subject and artist are happy with the results. Paul even got the Life By Chocolate logo on the jacket.

There was a reason for the BBQ frame of mind. In between sitting for the demo, Mark was BBQ’ing some huge beef ribs with his special homemade BBQ sauce. Here he is about to put the ribs on the grill.

Look at the size of those ribs!

This is Mark giving his best Texas sneer. I told him to either smile when I took his picture or give me a good cowboy sneer. He choose the sneer!

The 4+ hours slow-cooking on the grill yielded these mouth-watering ribs.

Mark gave the largest rib to Paul and when Paul saw the size he said, “This could feed my entire family!”

Yesterday, Wednesday, the class had another model. This time it was Heather W. from our town.

Here are some snaps of the students hard at work. Paul did a demo in watercolor that evening, but I haven’t taken a picture yet. I’ll do that today.

This is Jaieur B, who is from Hong Kong and is staying for the Margaret Dyer workshop, too.

This is Ann C. from Naples, FL, who is a frequent participant at the Hudson River Valley Art Workshops.

Here you can see Heather, Chick (in the middle) and Len.

Here is a closer view of Chick and Len’s portraits.

Today more portrait fun is on the schedule. This time they will have two different models, one in the morning and one in the afternoon.