Seminars

UPCOMING  WORKSHOPS and SEMINARS

If you see a workshop you might like to do with a group of friends, please contact me.

FALL 2023 SEMINAR:

ENGAGING CURIOSITY and RIGOR TO

Canopy Pastel on Sandpaper

IMPROVE OUR PAINTING

VISION:  I am preparing this seminar with the hopes of  building a community of people who paint and who want to rigorously pursue skills, knowledge and understanding of their craft.

This seminar is for practicing painters who have been working on their craft for enough years to have a solid feel for their medium(s), painting terminology and basic patterns of practice.

Requirements – 

I.  A painting medium (oil, watercolor, chalk, acrylic etc).,  mediums for sketching, drawing and doodling.

II. Be eager to engage by

1.  Committing to a minimum of 10 hours a week to practicing your craft,
2. Attending each meeting (these will be bi monthly to start) you can join on zoom or in person),
3. Practicing critical thinking,
4. At times separating ‘self’ (ego?)  from work,
5. Being open to exploring any ideas that come up including religion, politics, history, social stigmas etc. in regards to painting and art as a means of seeking truth.
6. Preparing to pursue rigor in action, thought, investigation and learning,
7. Completing  agreed upon projects,
8. Staying on topic during meetings!

III. Computer with zoom capability if you are attending remotely

IV. Ability to post images digitally. We will discuss how best to do this in our first meeting.

Knowledge Requirements

Must have solid understanding of: drawing, form, edge, line, 1,2 & 3 point of view perspective,  geometric shapes and how light reveals form, color wheel, basic warm and cool colors, composition, hue, chroma, value.

Must have a working knowledge of but not necessarily have used much: How to learn anatomy of objects, doing 1,2,3 point of view perspective, analyzing a painting,

GENERAL OUTLINE

1. We will begin by meeting 2 times a month. Meetings will be hybrid: zoom and in person. The group will decide when we meet.  

2. Initial  focus will be on scope of skills  we want to pursue while congruently identifying and building habits necessary to  improve our work.             These habits will include: Sketchbook Habit, Drawing Exercises and Doodling Techniques, Eye Hand Co ordination Drills, How to  ‘See’ Methods and De Constructing Schemas

3. Our first session(s) will be on exploring Drawing, Sketching and Doodling and why each of these are important to our work as painters.

4. While we do the above, we will each pick a skill we want to pursue in our own work describing for others the project we will undertake to learn and practice this skill. We will share progress on our individual work regularly.

Some other projects: Master copies to practice skills, museum visits to heighten our visual awareness, analysis of both known and unknown works in order to build our ability to see and discern skill and vision, individual projects to build skill and vision, ?

Specific skills we will certainly work on are:

-the science of drawing:

-artistic drawing:

-color- chroma, temperature, value:

-composition: notan: value studies:

-brush stroke techniques:

-paint application including : glazing, impasto, painting in oils without solvents,

-environmental issues with painting;

SESSIONS will be structured initially like this:

1.  Greetings 5 or so minutes
2. Share specific thing learned – an idea, a skill, etc related to painting
3. Discussion on that day’s topic. First topic will be Drawing, Sketching and Doodling.  Future topics can be decided by group
4. Examine individuals’ works either for creator to share process and what s/he hopes to do or for concrete specific feedback. Creator decides.
5. Decide homework and next meeting’s Topic.

While I am constructing the general format, participants will contribute ideas and projects to be pursued.

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THIS IS A CLASS I AM INTERESTED IN TEACHING AT SOME POINT  IF YOU MIGHT BE INTERESTED, PLEASE CONTACT ME.

ELEMENTS OF PAINTING 

ELEMENTS OF OIL PAINTING

Supplies: Paints: Tit White, French Ult Blue, Perm Rose, Indian Yellow, Cad Yellow ( try to get the Cad free Cad yellow), Manganese Blue, Sap Green, Viridian, Trans Oxide Red or Burnt Sienna.

Brushes: what ever you have. If you are new to oils flats 2, 4,6; rounds 4,6;  Filberts 4,6 to start. Brushes are something you need to play with to see what works for you.

Canvas: Get a couple 14 x 16 &/or 14 x 18 large enough to really play but not so large you have too much space to fill!

Other: Sketchbook, charcoal, pencils, palette ( I use something with a top like an colored pencil tin or an old tupperware) with plexi in the bottom I can take out to clean. Go cheap! Reuse! Backpack so you can just sling your stuff on to your back and head out to paint!

PRE WORKSHOP PLAY

Exercise #1:

Squeeze out a smidgeon  of  the 3 yellows – Indian Yellow ( IY) Cad Yellow )CY) and Yellow Ochre (YO). Drag  a brush threw the each pile of paint. Examine what each of these colors and how they look. How would you define each? Compare them to each other. How would you describe their qualities? Does one look ‘warmer’ than another’? Does one look more transparent than another? Why do you think that is important to observe? Which yellow is the lightest?

Try this with other colors. The more you can analyze your equipment and therefore understand it the more you will be able to do with it! Exercise #2

Now do what you did in Ex 1 with the rest of the colors you have. Remember you are the scientist! You are investigating the reality of your materials… their qualities  — the more you learn about them the more you can do with them! Look for which pigment is transparent ( you can see the white of the canvas or paper ) which is opaque. Which is the lightest which is the darkest and where the others fall between.

Now paint an  1″ thick 8 ” long  line of each color across your paper/ canvas of each color. Group the hues ( the colors together) For example all the yellows, all the reds etc.

Let this dry over night. Tomorrow draw vertical lines across the horizontal ones in the same order. You will be making a grid.

Observe what the colors do to each other. For example if you start with sap green and paint a Cad yellow over it is it the same color as when you start with the Cad yellow then draw the sap green over that?

Then mix the 2 colors how is that mixture different from when you were glazing ( painting a color over a dried color)?

One last project for tomorrow. Look around and start seeing what you might want to learn to paint. Take your sketch book out and do a quick value ( light and dark) study. Work in blocks of values.

Some good terms to know

Hue – color

Chroma – how pure or greyed a hue is. Cad yellow straight out of the tube is pure. Add grey it changes that chroma.

Value – lights and darks ( if you havent done a value study before it is a good exercise. Draw 10 squares. Fill them in from the lightest #1 ( white of the paper)  filling in the other blocks getting progressively darker until #10 the darkest.

Plane – area on same level being affected by light in the same way ( top of a box vs the side of the box)

Edge– where two planes meet

Highlight – where direct light hits an object making the light bounce off

Core value – actual value of an object

Core shadow– right where the volume turns away from the light

Reflected light– as an object turns back into light there is a hint of light.

1. Complementary colors
2. Temperature of colors
3. Blocking in
4.  Compositional Sweet Spots

EXERCISE # 3

Squeeze out a smidgeon of each pigment leaving some space between each. Then squeeze out some white.

Try mixing a little bit of white with each color and observe how it changes the colored pigment.

What happens when you add white to a transparent color?

What happens to an opaque color?

Keep adding white observing what happens!

EXERCISE # 4

Practice drawing volumes – spheres, cylinders, cubes etc. Imagine a light source then shade in your volumes. If its hard to create the light source, try taking a volume into a darkened room with one light source. Observe how the light reveals form. Most objects in nature can be depicted as a volume. By understanding how light reveals that form we can better paint it.

Exercise # 5

Pick a paint. What would you add to cool the color? What would you add to warm it? How can you change the temperature without changing the value?

Watercolor Workshop Information

While I currently do not have a Watercolor Workshop scheduled, I leave this here to help those who might be following my Watercolor Blog.

Basic supplies and how to choose them- I buy most of my supplies for Jerrys Artarama. The prices are excellent.

Palette –  Because clean color is critical to my work, I use a palette with LOTS of wells and even make more of them with marine caulk. This is also my travel palette. However, you might want one which is smaller.  For a while I had 2 small palettes instead of 1 large one. So think through how you will use your palette what is it you want to do and what would you actually take with you.

Palette

Brushes – I have found a new series of brushes to be very good Rhapsedy Rounds. Originally they were very inexpensive, but unfortunately they have increased in cost. However, if taken care of they will last for ever. Sizes 4,6 and 8 are good to start with.If these are too expensive, inexpensive synthetic hair brushes will work as well to get you started.

If these Also if you like to paint big get an inexpensive flat brush. If you can afford it an Oriental Art Supplies Orchid Bamboo Medium is excellent for expressive brush work.

Paint – Beginning colors are Cobalt Blue, Rose Madder, Aureolin Yellow and Opera. I use Winsor and Newton paints however any of the major brands will work. Do not buy student grade or cheap brands as they often use synthetic pigments which will dull your work.

Paper– Inexpensive watercolor paper is good for practice. We will discuss better grade paper during our workshop so you can choose what will work for you.

If you are new to watercolor and are unsure if this is a medium in which you want to invest in supplies bring to class a small cheap palette – these can be purchased at Shirleys in Hancock and inexpensive brushes. For $5 I can give you squirts of good professional grade colors to play with.

Gold Leaf 6

Asian Ink Painting Workshop Information

The goal of this workshop is to introduce students to new ways of seeing watercolor’s potential especially in the use of the brush. Economical brush stroke, which is completely what Asian Ink Painting is about, can liven and clean watercolor expression.  Understanding as well, Asian composition philosophies opens new ways of seeing objects to be painted.

SUPPLIES

I highly recommend you purchase good supplies and from OAS. Most of the Asian supplies for sale in this country of even in Asian counties where tourists frequent will only be an exercise in frustration when used for actual painting.

Only one brush is truly needed to start. I use this one brush for everything from very fine barely seeable lines to thick washes. It is the Orchid Bamboo Brush M.

Ink Stick Yellow Mountain Pine has a rich amount of pigment ratio to binder

Suzuri or grinding stone. if you can afford one with a top go for it!

Paper- single suen buy as much as you can afford. Practicing on this paper will advance your brush strokes quicker.

At workshops I will provide: Paper, Vegetable Colors and Sumi
You will also need to bring to the workshop or for your own work at home:

–about 30 x 30 piece of white felt

–plenty of white smaller containers

–white towels.

PREPARING YOUR BRUSH

If you purchase a brush, please do the following as this will make sure it is in excellent shape and will also prolong its life.

#1. Remove plastic case and throw away

#2. Soak brush in warm water for 10 minutes. You can feel the change in the water as the sizing is released from the brush.

#3. Let air dry preferable with tip hanging down so water does not drip up into the bamboo

#4. Soak again Repeat until the water does not feel slimy.

Brushes drying