I am taking 4 days off to go down to Branson Missouri to an 8 hour a day for 2 days seminar from Joe Benjamin who teaches pen and ink. He is located in Silver Dolar City and here is a photo of him at work. He takes up to 90 hours to complete his larger drawings. When asked how come he spends so much time on one drawing he replied, "It's not about the time for Pete's sake, it's about the art!"

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What a character LOL

have fun calvin and hope you come back full of ideas

Thats great hope u will enjoy it!

How exciting for you! I love that area although I'm told it's built up considerably since I used to go there. (I'm originally from a little Kansas town near Joplin, MO & have relatives in Wichita.) The leader of the Girl Scouts troop I belonged to favored the Branson area for our camping trips & it was wild and untamed way back then! But Silver Dollar City was there & I loved to see the old timey craftsmen doing their crafts.

Ah, wonderful memories but I'm really excited for you getting to go to a seminar/workshop there! Please take lots of photos if you can to share with us! And we really want to see any art you produce from what you learn!

J

That's great news Calvin! With the way you have been progressing through these portraits you deserve a break like this. And to think that you get to spend so much time with a real master. I hope you pay attention so he doesn't break out his six-shooter and pistol whip ya!

I'm also trying to put together a little "away time" for myself and take an intense drawing or painting course. Probably somewhere in Austria or France. Its just that the dates for the ones I've already located work out so screwy for me.

I'll find one though, even if I have to fly to England and sit with RJS and drink Bud-weis-er all evening and watch him slop paint and pastel to paper. Hey, that don't sound like a bad idea! What do you think RJS?

Does Brenda do workshops? It would be very hard to get us all in one place at one time, but wouldn't it be fun to attend!

I hope it goes well too. Funny thing is that I read posts here from people about how they had gotten a lot out of taking art classes but for the life of me I just can't learn that way. Go figure LOL. I seem to learn better working on my own through trial and error (mostly error) then in a classroom setting.

Have fun Calvin!!!! Hope you have a great time. You do deserve the break. Make sure you get lots of ideas because I wanna know the tricks too I enjoy doing ink drawings too, just not very good. Though I did do Hooter the owl in Ink and framed it for a present for my grandmother. She has pnuemonia right now. So I figured it might cheer her up. Here is Hooter in ink...

nice one hun

Thank you all for the comments. I am back and it was a great learning experience. I learn a bunch. But the main thing I took away was the comment, "What distinguishes the professional from the amature is knowing when to quit".

Welcome back Calvin!!!! I am glad you had a great time.

Thanks for the quote ... so now I'll quit!