Home / Blog / Featured News / My Workshop with Ron Ranson
For my next workshop experience, I decided to pick a workshop presenter whose work I loved. That was Ron Ranson. When I first started teaching myself watercolor, I struggled for several years turning out muddy messes of skies. Through teaching college classes, I discovered painting videos; Ron’s was one of the first. I loved him (so friendly) and his approach (no frills, personal, fast, loose, and gorgeous). After copying the paintings in his book Ranson on Skies, my skies improved dramatically! At his website (www.ronranson.com), I discovered he gave workshops in his home for slightly cheaper ($100/day) than at a venue (like Art in the Mountains), and there were only four other participants. I signed up for five days and paid for a room in his home ($100/day with breakfast). My Big Adventure was about to begin!
The Ranson’s house is a mini-mansion in a well-to-do suburb of Portland, Oregon. Every day I took a walk around to neighborhood, getting a vicarious feel of being one of the wealthy. Every morning, Darla, Ron’s truly gracious wife (a beautiful and vital octogenarian Ron met at one of his workshops) made us a hearty breakfast and then provided a tasty lunch for the participants. Their house was filled with paintings of artists they’d met on their travels. (In earlier times, Ron did workshops all over the world.) The studio itself was spacious and well lit.
On the first day, per the usual format, the four of us sat in respectful silence while Ron demoed one of his famous winter sky paintings. Then there was some time afterward to paint on our own. At the end of the first day, I could see that I had already learned what I needed from his videos and books, so when I asked if I could just paint on my own while he demoed, he graciously 
agreed.
This was exactly the thing I needed to do and what saved me from being impatient about having to sit for hours while Ron demoed. I decided to view the whole experience as a spa vacation, where I could paint on my own 24-7. I spent the entire day, from 9:30 to midnight (with breaks for walk and eating) in the studio, painting what I wanted, using Ron’s library as inspiration. Sometimes a fellow participant would join me in the evenings (she also was staying in the house), and later in the week Ron would join me and talk about his life and his experiences in his house in England. It was poignant and wonderful.
Ron is truly a humble and good man, interested in people really learning what he has to share, not pretentious, very caring, and though aging is still giving it a good go. I was honored to just share time on this earth with him. He has been my mentor and inspiration, though he didn’t know it until recently. That seemed to touch him.
So was it worth the $1000 (not including gas) out of my hard-earned painting money? When viewed as an art retreat with a good soul, yes. However, my experience to date is that my best learning experiences have come from less-known “great” painters in my area (Vinita Pappas, Joy Wiltsee, and others).
November 24th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
[...] reviewing my experience with the workshops I’ve taken from Frank Webb and Ron Ranson, I feel the most value still lies in finding good painting videos and books (email me at [...]
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I’m looking for themes on my blog I am just starting. Do you think this type of theme would work for my photography blog?
November 18th, 2009 at 11:24 am
[...] reviewing my experience with the workshops I’ve taken from Frank Webb and Ron Ranson, Birgit O’Connor, and Vinita Pappas, I feel the while seeing an artist demo in person is of [...]