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I’ve always admired Larissa Blake’s work, especially the colour and vibrancy she captures in her paintings, so when I found out that she was running this workshop at the Art Est Art School in Leichhardt, I knew that I didn’t want to miss it.

The rooms at the Art Est Art School are large and well-lit and each person is supplied with their own easel and plenty of space to spread your paints and brushes on. This was certainly appreciated. There is also plenty of parking on site.

The process that Larissa takes you through is a reflection of her art practice. In reality it’s a two-step process. The first step involves the mind in planning the painting and the colours needed and the second step is where you are painting and responding freely from the heart because all the preparation has been taken care of.

Larissa’s preparation for the workshop ensured that we were all able to follow her process easily. We worked from photos supplied by Larissa though if there was another image you wanted to use this was fine too.

Larissa’s art practice starts by drawing. This is to help you to see and to not just know your subject intellectually. It engages you with what you will be painting, it makes you start to take notice of aspects that you would normally ignore. This first drawing is a quick sketch – sort of like saying – here I am, I am ready to start.

We then created a viewfinder from a scrap of paper in the same ratio as our canvas and with this viewfinder we selected a portion of the photo we wanted to paint. This was an effective way of selecting a good composition. Once we had decided on a composition, the next step was to draw it! Again this is a quick sketch and you find that you are starting to see a bit more and you can also adjust the composition at this stage if it’s not working.

Once you have completed your exploratory drawings it’s time to start preparing your canvas and paints.

We checked our canvasses by painting them with water – if the water beads and doesn’t soak in, it means that the canvas needs to be primed. This was a great tip which I’ll be using from now on!

Larissa helped us to create a limited palette by looking at the original photo and only putting out the colours we would need in our painting. Some helpful questions are “Is the photo warm or cool?” And from there, “Does the red need to be warm or cool”? So you need to look at the photo and evaluate your colours. Another tip from Larissa was “If you don’t like the colour on your palette, don’t put it on your painting – you won’t like it any better”. So true.

Now you are ready to begin to paint! I loved learning about this process – it felt like being given a piece of the puzzle that’s been missing in my own art practice.

Once your canvas and palette are ready it’s time to choose the predominant colour of the photo. This is the colour that you will use as the first thin wash on the canvas.

The painting itself involved building layers – starting with the darkest colour and making sure you connect these dark colours across the canvas. This helps to establish the bones of the composition. The first few layers were really loose and free and this is where watching Larissa’s demonstration was a great help in realising that this is not the time to look for perfection. Your work can look quite messy at this stage.

One of Larissa’s favourite quotes from Juliet Holmes a Court is “Look long, paint fast". Larissa encouraged us to take time in reaching a decision and then working fast with decisive brush strokes.

There were many other tips and tricks especially to do with colour that Larissa generously shared with us, so you’ll have to go along to one of her workshops to find out what they are. I will certainly be attending another workshop with Larissa.

You can see examples of Larissa’s work at her online art gallery.

Larissa will also be running the Contemporary Acrylics Workshop at The Mitchell School of Arts in Bathurst from 12-18 July, 2009.

Stephanie Champion