Day one of the Weekend With the Masters has passed. And what a day it was. My good friend, Ryan Mellody, and I have had the opportunity to be out in California for the 2010 WWM. We began the morning assisting David Leffel as he gave a still life demo. It was a great experience not only watching him paint, but seeing his paintings in person provides so much more information than i have ever seen in print. I found it very interesting to learn that he did the entire painting using mostly one brush, and that he never cleans his brushes during a painting. To him, it's a waste of time when you could be painting. Crazy.

I also had the opportunity to sit in on Scott Christensen's demo. I really like Scott. He is so down to earth personally and in his artistic approach. His methods are simple and without any cloud of mystery.

In a few moments of down time (very few) i had the pleasure of meeting Daniel Keys and Michelle Dunaway, two extremely gifted and very kind-hearted people. They need no introduction as I'm sure you all know their work very well. Keep your eyes on these kids folks, you're gonna like what you see. I know i have already!

Later in the day i stopped in to a workshop with Sherrie McGraw, as she painted a head study of Morgan Weistling, then caught the second half of a fascinating lecture from Scott Burdick.

One of the highlights of the day, of course, was a still life demo by Richard Schmid... in. credible. Ryan and I were fortunate to be able to assist in staging and setup for his demo. What an experience that was. Needless to say, the painting was an instant masterpiece and a joy to watch. At the conclusion of the demo we all enjoyed a beautiful dvd slide presentation by his lovely daughter, Molly Schmid, highlighting many of Richard's paintings.

Then the day concluded with a discussion panel led by Richard Schmid with Carolyn Anderson, Dan Gerhartz, Rose Frantzen, Scott Burdick, Quang Ho, Sherrie McGraw, and Jeremy Lipking. The panel, among many things, discussed the pros and cons of technology as it relates to the artist. That was like 2 hours of drinking from a fire hose! I took away so much from that. I took some video of it, so I'll post some links as they become available in the future.

Well, that's it for today. I'm tired. More to come...