Artists always learn something new
By GAYLE WEBER
STOCKTON -- Beulah Brown admits she's not quite as prolific as some of the other 35 artists participating in the 20th annual Palco Art Club workshop this week.
On Tuesday, she was starting on what she claimed to be her first watercolor.
"The first one I destroyed, so this is the first one," she said, pointing to her work that eventually will be a girl sitting on a picnic table.
"I'm going to try a lot harder on this one than the other one."
Brown, a Morland resident, will get help with any bumps in the road this week from Susan Blackwood, a watercolorist who has been an instructor at the workshop since its inception.
Blackwood said she does what she can to encourage each artist's individual style.
"My job is to take them at whatever level they are and whatever they're interested in and bring out the way they paint," Blackwood said.
Blackwood's guidance already has helped Brown's sister, Charlotte Keith.
"For the background, she splashes her colors everywhere on the page. Then she goes in and starts refining it," Keith said.
Keith used the new technique to begin her basket of flowers watercolor Tuesday.
Keith said Blackwood always provides useful tips, and she has learned quite a bit in the four years she has attended the workshop.
"But we keep coming back asking the same questions," Keith said jokingly.
Blackwood continued to offer helpful tips this week, demonstrating how to paint eyes, noses, ears and mouths.
"There's a knack to that. You don't think about those things," said Berdina Whisman, Palco Art Club president. "She took time out to start with the basics."
Blackwood said she enjoys coming back to Rooks County every year from her home in Montana.
Her first few workshops took place at a campground near Webster State Lake. The workshop then moved to a church in Stockton before ending up at the Stockton City Auditorium, a venue large enough to fit the approximately 40 artists who annually attend.
The workshop, which lasts through Friday, also gives artists a chance to experiment with oil paintings with instructor Howard Friedland.
"I prefer watercolor," WaKeeney artist Bobbi Kerth said, "but I want to learn something new."
Kerth already had completed a painting of horses and was beginning work on a painting of cattle standing under a tree Tuesday.
"It's local beauty," Kerth said.
Conversely, Brown and Keith used to work in oils, but switched to watercolors a few years ago.
"That's the dark side," Keith said pointing across the room at the assembled painters learning oils. "This is the light."