First two days of Alvaro's workshop

The first day we didn't do any painting ourselves, yet it was maybe the day when I learned the most. Watching Alvaro in action is so inspiring. He makes it all seem so simple. At times he creates something looking like a total mess and in a few minutes the mess takes a fully meaningful shape of people, cars, whatever... 

One of the demos he did was to paint the parking lot of the place, where the workshop was held. A seemingly dull and uninteresting place. But he wanted to show us that everything could become a worthy subject. That story is illustrated in the next three photos

Alavro painting the parking lot. He often has this smile while painting, like he really enjoys it. Or maybe, he's imagining us wondering "What is this mess and how will he be able to get out of it!?" , while he very well knows how he'll do it.

This is the view from where he stands. Of course, at one point a few people passed by, got in a car and drove off. That got into the painting, together with the white house and the red car.

I cannot post a proper picture of his painting, but I think it should be ok to show you the result from this angle. A typical Alvaro painting full of life and atmosphere.  He absolutely made his point.

Inspired by that demo, on the way home I observed the shapes of cars in back-light and in the evening painted this study.

Blaga's cars in motion

The second day we painted Paris from pictures. He demonstrated painting each city-scape and then we tried to imitate the master.

My version of Rainy day in Paris was all wrong. The value of the buildings was too strong and the foreground was a mess. Alvoro looked at it, grabbed some white and in a few brushstrokes fixed the buildings. Then he spattered some cerulean on the right, which made the mess much more acceptable. The painting still sucks, but I'm saving it, as it has Alvaro's touch :)

Blaga's version of Sunny Day in Paris - I'm happy with this one

Two more days to go
to be continued...