Drawing & Painting at the Eiteljorg Museum of Western Art

On the last Saturday in February, the Indiana Plein Air Painters Assoc. (IPAPA) sponsored a Paint-IN at the Eiteljorg Museum of Western Art in Indianapolis.  This is a gorgeous museum of sand stone, limestone with huge wooden beams down the main corridor; and the collection of Western paintings is probably the most outstanding east of the Mississippi.   IPAPA members could either paint copies of paintings in the permanent collection or paint from a model dressed in Western costume.  I opted for drawing and painting from the model.  It was great fun with about ten painters crammed together with their easels on 5ft square drop cloths! There was one model in the morning and another in the afternoon.  Having never painted a figure in either oil or watercolor, I decided to ease into it by drawing a sketch of the "white/Anglo" cowboy in the morning and then painted a watercolor of the "black" cowboy in the afternoon.

This sketch is once again on Twinrocker "Yale" handmade text weight paper which I toned with a Raw Sienna watercolor wash.  The pencils are Prismacolor Verithin Black Terra Cotta #745.   The staff and visitors to the Eitlejorg Museum with lots of kids (it was a busy Saturday) absolutely loved watching all the artists painting in about three galleries with some of us and the models in the main corridor.  It was such a success that both IPAPA and the Eiteljorg will do it again.  Tomorrow I'll post my watercolor.