"Sophie the Mudhead", 12x16, oil on masonite
I took a workshop last week with master impressionist John Ebersberger at The Southern Atelier. John studied with Henry Hensche during the last 10 years of the artist's life. John has certainly mastered this amazing style of painting in the impressionist manner, started by Charles Hawthorne over 100 years ago. John's paintings are filled with beautiful soft color and dynamic palette knife strokes.
We started the workshop by going back to the basics and painting block studies in the hot Florida sun. Over the weekend we headed over to Sarasota Bay and painted live models all day long. John is a hoot and we all learned a great deal about this technique while having an enjoyable time as well. All weekend there were fish literally flying out of the water every couple of minutes which added some levity to trying to learn a technique that is certainly not easy to master. We used a palette knife for every painting, but John allowed us to take out the brushes during the final afternoon.
This painting probably looked a bit more Hensche-esque before I messed around with it today, but nonetheless I was happy with the result.
John is a wonderful painter, teacher and a lot of fun. I'm very glad that I took the workshop and hopefully John will return next year to do another one in Sarasota!
To learn more about Henry Hensche and his teaching methods, , please visit the Hensche foundation website here.
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