Thank you so much for all the love from my last newsletter. The stories and tributes to David Hockney have been such a joy to see and read. He clearly affected SO many people and artists.
Here’s an interview with Katy of Creative Boom. How Gayle Kabaker turned a whisper at the Met into a life of pools, brides, and quiet rebellion The New Yorker cover artist on why a cover still feels like a miracle, the morning David Hockney died, and learning to paint bedding like water.
I’d planned to tell you all about our incredible trip teaching in Portugal, and I will - but I’ve still been consumed by Hockney’s work since I last wrote.
Everyday at our gorgeous venue in Northern Portugal, I jogged past a beautiful field that I wanted to paint - but I needed a woman in it to REALLY inspire me. This provided a perfect opportunity to show our students how I take photo reference to paint from, and we were so lucky to have pro photographer Julie Skarrat as a painting student! Julie caught me photographing Christina in the pose that would become this painting.
BEFORE & AFTER PETER’S FEEDBACK
After David Hockney died I spent the whole weekend just painting and looking at his work. I am SO lucky to be married to an artist with a great eye, and also to someone who doesn’t mind when I say I am going to keep painting after dinner on a Saturday night. I don’t always listen to his feedback - but mostly he always has good suggestions. (you can see his work HERE) Lighten the field and darken the foreground so it has more depth, and make the tree line uneven. She was wearing Converse sneakers which looked really cool - but I decided to let them go. I had to pose myself for the hands as I couldn’t see them clearly enough. I’m all for abstracting and making things different than my photos - but I do need to see what things actually look like in order to change them how I want.
Here’s some sketches I did to decide what I wanted to paint.
Two small paintings to decide what I wanted to paint bigger. (Turned out neither!)
More sketches, and an incredible peony from my garden. When deciding what to paint bigger I ask myself, does this really spark excitement and joy?
PORTUGAL
Every day we woke up to a beautiful video that Julie made of our previous day. You can see them and more in my IG highlight. Documenting our retreats often feels like extra work. What a treat this was for for me and Jennifer Orkin Lewis!
This was an extra special week for us because we also had special guest - yogi/healer/goddess Chloe Ward with us! Oh, YES! She will be coming on more retreats with us!
Not only did Chloe offer yoga ever morning and Yin, Yoga Nidra, and meditation after dinner many nights - but she also posed for us! This group was particularly interested in figure drawing so we did more of this than usual. I taught fashion illustration online for a few years - so I did a bit of a crash course in figure/fashion drawing. We split the group in half a few times and here’s what one group did with part of my fashion drawing lesson.
Jennifer Orkin Lewis and I both teach many of the lessons - then we also have our ‘special’ lessons and one of mine is always how I paint water.
I was very inspired by the colors and landscape! I thought I’d be more inspired by the horses - but there’s still time. Jennifer had an extra special connection with this horse:)
Don’t we look SO happy? We both love teaching so much!
Our wonderful group.
We have one student who was with us for her fifth time! We watch everyone’s progress with such joy as they have their breakthroughs and become more confident. It’s always bittersweet when it’s over. New friendships are formed. It truly is such a magical week.
PATREON
We did a special Hockney tribute in our Patreon Zoom. This was painted from a photo of me getting out of the pool in Portugal. We have a lot of fun in our Patreon! You can join HERE.
Inspired by Chloe Briggs and drawingisfree.org and her weekly face drawing Zoom sessions. (Every Monday at noon EST. Check it out - we love it!)
Mark your calendar for an extra special free 1 hour Zoom for all Patreon members, not just the paid levels. July 9th we will host two very special drawing sessions that you won’t want to miss! Simply sign up for our free Patreon and you will be notified with the Zoom link.
Anyone can draw faces. I’m Gigi and this amazing portrait is by my 5 year old grand daughter.
FRANCE
There are still a few spots left for France! We are very excited to go back to where our whole teaching journey began!
As always - I love hearing from you.
xo
Gayle
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