Just finished taking a watercolor workshop with local Brownsville artist, Zito Kare at the Brownsville Museum of Fine Art. Zito gave a oil painting workshop two weeks ago and was the judge of this years International Art Exhibit.

Workshops are not the place to do your best paintings but they are the place to observe and learn new techniques no matter how long one has been an artist. A good workshop instructor will introduce his methods of painting by demonstrations and helping individual participants. When taking a workshop, the student should be willing to "stretch" out of their own comfort zone and try new methods and techniques that are being presented by the instructor. Once back in your own studio you may or may not incorporate all of these techniques into your style but you should avoid attempting to change your own style completely by trying to mimic the instructor's style completely.

I have attended numerous workshops over the past 20 years and each one has added to my artistic skills and techniques but I feel that I have developed my own unique style of presenting my artistic visions.

Zito Kare's workshop reinforced the beauty of mingling the watercolor paints directly on the paper rather than mixing colors on the palette. He also showed that beautiful colors could be obtained with a minimal number of paints on his palette. He uses Ultramarine Blue, cerulean Blue, Paynes Grey, Cadiminum Red and Raw Sienna as his basic colors in almost all of his demonstrations. These are hues that I had rarely used on my own palette. He mixes beautiful greens without using a tube of green paint. He also mixes great dark colors without using staining paints.

If you have an opportunity to take a workshop with Zito, I recommend you do so.