Hobby exploits 2020 and onward

On the weekend of 10-11^th September, I did my second workshop with certain Marco Frisoni. This time the theme was oil painting and the event was held in the centre of Dublin in Academy Plaza Hotel. The venue was surprising but in the end worked great, we had conference room all to ourselves, big tables for 13 participants and plenty of light from Marco’s own lamps (I believe there were more daylight bulbs than painters in the room).

What was even more different from previous workshop is the fact that this time event was ‘powered’ by Big Child Creative, Spanish company producing high quality large scale (75 mm) models and busts. As you can imagine we were to paint large model, precisely this one:

The event started at 10 am on Saturday, with very quick introduction we instantly got into building our models. I guess I didn’t write it in my previous report but building and painting in larger group always has inspiring effect on me, people who 10 minutes ago were complete strangers to each other, with different backgrounds, different nationality and language spontaneously help each other, discuss ideas, share tools and paints, general ‘kumbaya’ feeling all around.

This time I don’t have too much to say (or show for that matter) regarding painting. Most participants was new to oil painting (although had great achievements in acrylics) thus Marco referred basic rules of using oils, differences between types and some brands, markings on the tubes, use of different medias and additives etc. He also presented two technics of using oil paints on the mini, and we started painting. The hotel didn’t put any limits on the amount of time we could spend in the room so we finished painting well after 8PM.

I went for complete oil technique, and at the end of the first day had this to show:

On the second day, many painters started work around 9AM, and with brief lunch-break around 2 we’d worked until late afternoon. This is where it got me:

To sum up the knowledge presented on the weekend, I guess at this point I have couple of years of experiance with oils under my belt and yet Marco managed to surprise me some with pieces of theory and skills that I didn’t realize were there to discover  (like use of pure oils – not oil paints). The topic is so vast and has such a history behind it that after those two days I want two weeks or months more!

After painting, we obviously paid a visit to a local pub and did some well-deserved whiskey tasting.

Anyway, another workshop, another great weekend and tones of inspiration for the future. Thank you Marco and the gang for the great time.