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Sandra Woods
Art despite pain

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(posted on 18 Aug 2024)

One of my favourite things about taking virtual-live watercolour workshops, with many artist-instructors, is receiving their suggestions on my own paintings and sketches.
One of these instructors is Brazilian artist Fabio Cembranelli, with whom I've taken numerous workshops.
He provides theory, along with several demos, during an initial 3.5 hour Tuesday session. Workshop participants then have a day or two to create our own versions of the subjects he demonstrated, which we send in for his 1.5 hour follow-up session on the Friday.
The photo below shows Fabio pointing out what a difference it made when I painted from life versus from photos, for my apples and oranges.
It also shows how how important it is to have good light when painting after dark, as my evening watercolour of apples needs darker values - because my painting looked much darker without any natural light.
N.B.: These are NOT Fabio's paintings, his are exponentially better!
His workshops are often twice/month, less frequent when he's traveling to teach around the world [see www.fabiocembranelli.com].
Fabio is offering an in-person workshop this fall, for five days in upstate New York, which I'll be attending as a 30th wedding-anniversary gift from my sweetheart.
That five-day workshop will be a challenge for me, as I live with a CRPS-related Mild Cognitive Impairment, and several other symptoms of CRPS rare disease ...
Including chronic bone/joint/neuropathic/skin pain in my right hand and arm, as well as spasms and tremors in that arm.
I may not be able to *fully* participate in the workshop, but my sweetheart convinced me to try.
He knows that I'll learn much more in person than online, even if I can't paint all of the exercises or demos because of my two rare diseases.
After all, that's what my Art Despite Pain [#ArtDespitePain] initiative is about.
Treating art as brain-plasticity or neuroplasticity training for my chronic pain, and then using the resulting paintings and sketches for chronic pain awareness ...
And encouraging others living with persistent pain to try creative pursuits as a form of pain-management technique.

PS: If you're wondering what feedback he gave me on these paintings, he didn't have any improvements to suggest for the oranges but recommended that I darken some of the reddish values on the left-side apple - something that I'd noticed as well when I saw it in daylight.