Category Archives: Workshops and Training

Seasons Greetings from Winifred

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Hello Fellow Artist!

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Your art and creativity, makes the world a more beautiful and joyful place to live. I wish you a wonderful season of peace and reflection and the greatest of health and happiness in the New Year.  

Expand your creativity and your skills in 2017 by learning or increasing your ability to do freehand painting.  You’ve been thinking about doing so, but the idea of not having those photo pixels is a bit scary. You don’t have to give them up all at once.  You can start gradually by freehand painting only parts of the portrait – the hair or dress, for example.  You can practice altering a subjects appearance. With practice, you will gradually develop the confidence to paint a sketch or a trace of a photo or paint from imagination.  You will develop a painting style of your own.  

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Above – Tutorial “Portrait Basics and Beyond”

 I enjoy allowing myself to be inspired by a variety of artist,and to create paintings in their style. but eventually, I simply return to my style of expression.  For instance, recently, I created several Alice Neel inspired portraits.  She uses a great deal of outlining in her paintings.  I practiced including this characteristic in several paintings. Personally however, I tend not to outline at all and ultimately I  returned to my personal style of painting.  You may also want to practice abstract portraits, images which are very expressive, free of features and detail, allowing for interpretation.  This is quite fun to do.  

 Developing freehand painting skills, in addition to skills you’ve already developed, will allow you to create even more creative images for your friends, family or clients.  Below are several freehand digital paintings I recently completed.

Please visit my store for Tutorials and Workshops which can assist you along your journey of creativity.  There are great sales on tutorials. Contact me if you want to purchase 3 or more for greater discounts. Workshops will be tailored  to your personal needs. 

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Painting with Pattern Pens Part 2

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Please refer to previous post for Painting with Patterns – Video 1

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Making and Painting with Patterns

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Hello Everyone,

You probably know by now that I love patterns and love to sketch, enhance,  or paint and fill with patterns.  This is a quick video to show you the process.  I hope you enjoy. Winifred

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Painting Italian Street Scenes 2

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Focusing  on Perspective

I chose this image to paint. It has strong leading lines and a lovely outdoor cafe.

I simplified the structure as shown in the diagram below.

Determining the horizon line is not scientific but one was chosen along

A vanishing point was also identified.

This is the final painting.

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Winifred’s Ladies in the Parlor

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Make Some Marks

For some reason – this piece makes me thing I am looking into a doll house.  Probably the colors, the fact that a room was created, their doll like figures all contribute to this. Did I have this in mind when I started – indeed not. I just started.  Open a blank screen, selected a rose toned backround. filled it with a patterned paper texture, liked it and thought “hmmm” – what shall I do next? Perhaps an antique settee with a lady draped across it. I sketched a little settee, put in the arch of a doorway. I knew I wanted the to create the illusion of depth and a room beyond.  Looked back at my settee and within the shadows and pattern of the structure saw to women sitting there.  That set my direction and I simply  followed it.  It is kind of a one step at a time kind of evolution for me to create this kind of painting. So, I added the structure of walls, the floor and decorated the room. I love texture as you can see.

I think it is important to get something down on paper. It is less important to know what you are doing. When working from imagination, my “knowing” seems to trail behind my marks.  It’s kind if like my life.  I don’t wait to have everything figured out before I get going.  I get going and then my life reveals itself to me.  I am good with that.

This image is full of vibrant color – which reminds me to remind you how important it is to calibrate your display often so that you can actually see accurately the color you are creating.  X-Rites ColorMunki Display is the perfect device for you to use when you want an easy and affordable way to display your colors accurately.

Learn more about X-Rite color management solutions.

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Winifred Whitfield Painting from Imagination

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In this digital environment, we have so many options available to us in how we create paintings.  We can clone and take information and color from an underlying image, while retaining the ability to add new information, brushstrokes and unique creativity.  We can paint on top of an image, smoothing, blending, changing texture and color.  Creating custom work for my clients, the above two options are the best choices for retaining some degree of likeness and these are certainly the best options for  most photographers who cannot paint. And then there is the process of painting from imagination and one needs to be able to paint to do this.

With this process I visualize an image – even if only a starting point and I start painting.  I have no sketch, no photo to look at, no still life set before me.  It is so liberating.  It is an exploration. It is fun.  That is how the paintings below were born recently.   If at the end of a painting, I look at it and feel nothing –  is it brings me no joy or has no power or impact, I simply delete it.  The time and effort os never wasted. There is nothing to loose.  If you are interested in learning to paint in any of the ways, I described, please send an inquiry so I can determine how I can assist you.

And  below one of my all time favorites, and featured before in the post “doodling”

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Corel Painter 12 – Making Custom Paper

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Making Custom Paper

In this video tutorial, I will demonstrate how to create paper textures for Corel Painter 12 as well as for previous versions.  I will focus on 2 or the 3  most popular methods for doing this.  We will create paper from fractal patterns in another tutorial I will create a texture from an existing image file.  I will  then create a  simple black and white custom painting  in Corel Painter which I will capture as a paper texture.

I selected this floral image to use to create a  paper texture.

Please feel free to download both of the above images to use in your paper library.

Sorry, I could not get the video to play on this page – click link above to go to Youtube.

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Let’s Make A difference in 2012

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How do we move forward in 2012?

It doesn’t have to be profound and if history is any validation those resolutions do not work.   Personally I believe in a couple of things.  One is intention.  For me, it is my intention to be not a good painter but a great painter.  What do the dance or piano virtuosos do?  They practice, practice. practice – 8. 10, 12 hours per day.  The fact is that on most days I do that too.  I love to paint so it is not a chore.  I have a small but high end clientele.  the high end does not necessarily mean they are all wealthy but they want great work and my higher end products.  They can see the difference in what I provide as opposed to other products available to the.  I truly care about the art I create for my clients. whether it be personal portrait art or another product I value, which is creating business portraits for distinguished women in my community.  I give my clients the best of me and I work to make that happen.

Back to baby steps and practice.   Yes, most days, I spend 8 to 16 hours at my computer either creating a client painting or just practicing.  I go through different paint brushes I have  collected.  I make marks on paper, I try a brush with different papers because this will determine the look of the stroke.  Often I just doodle.  You have seen some of my doodles in previous post.  Well I have more today.  I start with a blank canvas.  I can do no wrong because it is simply a practice  but it begins to set in my head what various brush/paper combinations looks  so that when I am actually working, I know just how to use my tools.   I am a firm believer in building my tool kit.   This image is the result of tonight’s doodling.  It’s trees again in a pastoral environment.  I must miss my farm, I seem  to keep recreating a similar environment in my images.  Rolling hills, a 100 year old farm house,  apple trees. I started making marks tonight and this is what happened.

I love the thick impasto brushes with all the texture this gives.

In the image above I used various brushes by Skip Allen in his thick impasto brush set.

This skill building does not occur over night for any of us.  It is a journey.  And for me, with or without a photo, I love to paint. Little by little, day by day we learn. In my workshops, I always explain you can get started now and in a couple of years, you will likely be creating some pretty nice digital paintings or you can not get started and in a couple of years you will still have no clue how to make the Paint software sing.  So, just get started.  Even with baby steps, slowly but surely, you will start to see the results you want.

What ever your intention, stay focused and practice – you will achieve results – guaranteed.  Happy New Year and may all of your intentions come to fruition.

Again, just playing with brushes.

This is by no means a great image.  I simply  went looking for brushes which might simulate the appearance of fireworks. I went through all the brushes in the set tonight.  I have not had them very long. This was the point of the exercise – just to see.

I used David Gells, sparkling glo brush from his Concept Glo Brush Set for the fire works,  and Skip Allens Gold brushes for the gold border – I referred you to those in a previous blog.

Well, that’s it for 2011.  I wish you a very happy, accomplished and prosperous 2012.  Winifred

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Link for Winifred’s X-Rite-Nik Webinar

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On November 16th, I hosted  webinar  sponsored by Nik software and X-Rite.  Attendance was at capacity – nearly 1000 webinar attendees. For this reason, quite a few were unable to attend and requested the archived link. Here it is – enjoy:

Winifred’s X-Rite and Nik  Sponsored
“TAKE YOUR IMAGES TO WOW”!!

This was the first webinar I have ever hosted.  I was a little nervous in the beginning but then I relaxed and had a great time.  I will soon have custom Nik Color Effects 4  “recipes” posted on their site.

I will host workshops and Corel Painter training through out 2012. Please contact me if you would like to be notified.

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