Workshop at Daniel Smith, Seattle!

Daniel Smith Artist’s Store, Seattle Washington

Las Tablas sunset, watercolor

The town store, watercolor

I am super happy to announce that I was invited to teach a two day workshop at the Daniel Smith store in Seattle, Washington! Dates are August 22-23, 2015. Free painting demo on Friday, August 21!
Not only that, I will also get a factory tour and finally meet the person who is behind all this and has supported me over the years!
Please follow this link for all the details:
http://seattledanielsmithevents.blogspot.com/

In case you have missed my article on pigments, here it is:
http://www.danielsmith.com/content–id-813?utm_source=Body&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Web&utm_campaign=022415FrankEber

My sincere gratitude goes out to Katherine and Joseph for their support and quick work! Thank you!

Studio set-up

   

   

My studio and workstation are pretty straight forward: Good light, great easel, but unfortunately, not enough space on my workstation! I really need to extend the table top all across the room, so I can have multiple workstations (at least two, preferably three) and more importantly, room for all the brushes. I hate looking for a certain brush in the middle of the painting and not finding it! Putting them in jars is not working for me.

A word about the easel: I had to slightly modify it to fit my needs. It needed a wider support piece on the bottom to put the painting surface on. It kept falling off, since the manufacturer only mounted a very narrow dowel there. But it was an easy fix and I love it now! I have three different table easels, one I made myself.

My palette is by Holbein. I have a few of these and they come in different sizes with large mixing wells that have a nice, high divider to prevent overspill into the neighboring well. Most cheap palettes don’t feature that important detail. Holbein makes excellent products.

Many of my brushes are made by JAX, Da Vinci and Escoda. Escoda has the best synthetic pointy brushes that never seem to go blunt! My favorites are Prado and Barocco. Unfortunately, it’s a bit of a challenge to get them in the US.

Lastly, my painting surface is a plastic sheet that I buy at Home Depot. It’s called ‘Coroplast’ and works really well. The other solution I recommend is driving around your neighborhood and stealing those signs that endorse politicians or certain parties in people’s front yards. They are made of the same material! ~~~ I am kidding, of course!

The first picture is just my ‘office’ with my computer and printer

 

 

 

Daniel Smith dot cards

I am proud to say I have my own personalized dot cards courtesy of this great American paint manufacturer! DS came up with this nifty idea as a quick and convenient way to try out their colors without having to buy a whole tube! Just put your paintbrush loaded with water to it and, voilá…  Great way to find out if you like a color enough to go buy it!

My colors are pretty basic: if you think about it, I use yellow, red, blue and some earth tones. Sure, there’s the occasional oddball (like undersea green), but those are continually changing.  Colors like cobalt blue or yellow ochre can’t ever be replaced and you really can’t do without them. I love their cobalt teal and it goes without saying that their quins are amazing!

I would like to thank Pam and Katherine of JJC Industries for making this possible for me. It is a great honor, now I just hope I can live up to it!!