League of Roanoke Artists Retreat

 Hey Friends,  Our retreat at Alta Mons ended Sunday but I'm just getting around to showing you a few shots from the Wonderful workshop given to us from Gina Louthian-Stanley.  Gina is a wonderful teacher with lots of patience, a soft spoken easy going nature.  Love the lady !
Above is one of the streams on the property !  Loved this place.

 Because it is difficult to show with just a few brief pictures, I decided to start with one of Gina's demo's.  She started the above painting with NOTHING in mind.  Putting on the cold wax mixed with oil colors.  Just a dab of oil from the tube mixed well with Dorlands Cold Wax.  She pushes and spreads the mixture with her hands, spatulas, rubber dough scrapper and anything laying close by.

 In this shot she spent maybe 30 minutes will explaining as she went along, using various papers and templates to get a variety of textures.  Then she laid a piece of newsprint paper on it and wrote words with a stick !

 Added a butterfly and more papers,  gave it a rest.  She may keep it as such or put more stuff in it !  It is a wonderfully messy process with endless possibilities.  VERY slow to dry and that's the part that will prevent me from working with it very often.  You have to have a LOT of patience !

 Then we went for another walk, something I love.  This is a beautiful little spot here in SW Va.  I was told the original use of the place was a resort for the railroad big wigs.  The United Methodist Church bought the place for the use of their children and youth groups, such as the Scouts.

 Gina is barely visible on the left and she is conducting the critique at the end of the weekend.  I hated to see it end.  I was the last one to leave.  Had to have another walk.  Took lots of photo's.  This is Susan Young's work here.  I got photos of every ones work but it would be an enormous post.

 Here is Mary Anne work.  Unfortunately you can't tell much about it but the paintings are beautiful.  Mary Anne used the mixture like paint with a knife.

 Here is a shot of Susan's work.  More graphic and abstract than Mary Anne's.  Both styles are easy on the eyes.

A final shot of Gina's to be assemblage.  She started working on the textures, etc. of the long piece.  She will finish with wooden hands and a nest with eggs, etc.  Should be gorgeous.

I didn't get any shots of my pitiful attempts but I will and that can be a future post.  Gina's is a great teacher and I bet she would be happy to give a workshop for your group, so here is a link to her blog, which should lead you to her email,  http://ginalouthian-stanley.blogspot.com/

Happy Trails Travel Well