This four-day workshop was such a big success! Thirteen artists from as far away as Smith Mountain Lake gathered at the Hahn Horticulture Garden Pavilion Feb 19-22 to learn all we could from well-known Blacksburg artist Jesi Pace-Berkeley. The level of her artistic skills were well matched by the level of her teaching abilities. We were challenged every day with the making of new color wheels, forming of eyes and lips from clay, learning how to critique each other and ourselves and how to get an accurate drawing for our portraits through the use of grids. Jesi's large and striking portraits surrounded and inspired us. The fruit of our labors are proudly displayed in this wonderful group
Our goal for our indoor plein air day was just to have a way for us to paint together and have a unique point of view over the town of Christiansburg. We had no idea what a fun time it would be thanks to the efforts of Ruth Lefko, Judy Crowgey, Jean Gallloway and the owner of Mockingbird Cafe who surprised us with a pot of free coffee! We couldn't have had better light to paint by if we tried. The big windows on two sides of the space overlooked the main intersection of the old downtown and gave us views of the renovated courthouse, banks, post office, the historic building on Franklin Street and a surprise view of a row of funky old houses which, from this point of view, appeared to be f
