John Morra Still Life Workshop

One of John's "Mertz" paintings

I attended the John Morra Still Life workshop at the Teaching Studios of Art in Brooklyn, NY on Oct 28 and 29th and learned a lot. We only had 4 people attend the workshop so John was able to spend a lot of time with each of us which was great considering the Oyster Bay workshop the previous week was sold out so I assume that had 12 people in attendance.

I was traveling from Boston so I tried to keep everything in a single duffle bag so I didn't bring any still life props with me so when I arrived John suggested looking on the street for props while I was on my to get breakfast and sure enough I found all of my props on the sidewalk.  I found a brick and a strange red metal bracket (ala John's Mertz paintings), a ragged red glove and Rob Zeller's studio had a horseshoe that I also used.  It was so Mertz-like that John did his demo quick-painting demo using my setup.

Day 1 - John handed out notes and had a little lecture on his processes and what we would be covering in the workshop.  We did the drawing portion in the early part of the day and then blocked in most of our paintings until the end.   We all used portable grids to do our sketching from.  John explained how we could make our own grids at home.  John also said that he was willing to stay as late as everyone wanted but unfortunately I only was able to stay until 6:30 but I thought this was very generous considering the scheduled time was until 5 pm.  He did the same the following night as well and once again I couldn't take advantage because I had to go to the train to head home.  I didn't find out until 6:30 that all buses were cancelled because of a freak snow storm in Boston and I had to stay another night.

Day 2 - We finished our paintings using John's flag process which involves painting in the major parts of the painting and the adjoining objects and adjusting and building colors and values based  on the adjoining object's colors and values and then using this method all over to fine tune it.

I would like to take a longer class from John in the future because 2 days was not enough time to pull from his knowledge and experience.  If you want to get John involved in a heated discussion, ask him what he thinks about painting from a photograph!  Right John?!

Rob Zeller was awesome and thanks to him for hosting this event.  I will definitely be back for other workshops.  It was pretty cool seeing his studio and working under and around his paintings.

Rob Zeller's studio space next to where the \workshop was held.

 
I really had a great time in New York for my 3-day stay and if you ever get a chance to go to the Metropolitan Museum I would highly recommend it.  This is a massive museum with some of the worlds most spectacular paintings.  The museum itself is a work of art.

This was my still life setup.  I found the brick, glove and odd piece of red metal on the street.  John thought it was close to his own "Mertz" paintings so he chose to paint this for his class demonstration.

John and I on the last day of the workshop
\

John chose my painting to do a demo on how he does his block-in portion and how to judge hues and values and work from one area of the painting to next by building off of the hues and values of adjoining hues and values.