Tom and Will Forrestall - Master Class - Parrsboro Creative

Tom's drawing over the front door at the Art Lab he rendered spontaneously Sunday afternoon.

As mentioned previously, I promised to write a post about the egg tempera Master Class with Tom and Will Forrestall on July 5th-9th 2017.

 I was pretty much in a fog this morning and am slowly recovering from an accumulation of five days without enough sleep at night, because I was in an unfamiliar bed, away from home, combined with the excitement of knowing I was going to be painting all day with Tom Forrestall and his son William.

It's an understatement to say it was a surreal experience for me, because I could hardly believe I'd been given such an opportunity, and it was a real eye opener, giving me the tools really needed to create the best kind of egg tempera painting possible.

Tom and William were so generous with their vast knowledge, expertise and skill. They sure make a great team and their working relationship was a joy to observe as father and son, keeping us well entertained with lots of laughter everyday.

Our great group of nine students were varied in their level of skill, and only a few of us had worked in the medium of egg tempera. One individual had never painting before and created some great egg tempera paintings in the class.

To witness the amount of enthusiasm, especially at the end of the five days, was palpable when Tom asked what we thought of egg tempera. The majority of us wanted to continue painting, using this ancient egg tempera paint medium. Tom was very happy to hear this, as was I, having been a convert to egg tempera since after seeing a retrospect of Tom's amazing paintings at the Owen's Gallery, while I was attending Mount Allison University.

Okay that's enough gabbin' I'll post some pictures, but before I do I would be remiss if I did not extend a huge thank you to Krista Wells, Michael Fuller at the Art Lab Studios and Gallery, Parrsboro Creative and Robert Moore. Your kindnesses are so very greatly appreciated. I also want to thank all those in my class for all the great conversations, laughs, knowledge and kindness you shared so generously. It was a wonderful five days I'll never forget. Lastly a very special thank you to Tom, for his prayers.

Tom's India Ink Under Painting Example ( That "you have to sneak up on from light to dark")

We all did underpaintings with India ink, painted studies using the egg tempera paint on paper, and then preparing our individual untempered masonite panels, getting them ready for the traditional mixture of rabbit hide glue and calcium carbonite to make the gesso for our panels to create our final paintings.

William Forrestall liberally applying the gesso mixture.

I documented the process and these photos are a compilation of what we did over the five days of this amazing Master Class with Tom and William Forrestall and nine students.

We used tracing paper to go over our image and then etched with charcoal to transfer our images onto the gessoed panels.

 

Tom and William Forrestall had an exhibition in the adjacent room and gave a great talk about egg tempera, art and their work. There were some engaging questions asked by the visitors on Sunday, and it was a wonderful wrap up to a fantastic, unforgetable, five day learning experience.

Taz, the very cool and creative, local Downtown cat.