Workshops and Individual classes offered.

Transform Your Painting With Composition (or Something’s Not Right With My Painting)

So what’s the big deal about composition?  What is it?  It’s the totality of the elements that make a good painting. How will you work with that space so it pleases the eye and the brain? The goal of this workshop is to teach composition tools that solve a lot of problems at the beginning of a painting, which will reduce angst and frustration for you later on. Color, value and rendering are easy to learn because they are so apparent. But by far the most important skill is to design your paintings right from the start. Composition is undercover until you learn the principles of it. The viewer may not be aware of good composition, but they’ll like the painting better. And you will too! The class will cover composition principles so you learn to recognize well designed paintings and what makes them work. Using your own photographs, notan studies be developed to teach the underlying structure of the image, followed by a five value gray scale studies.  You will then develop compositions from your photographs. Mixing color for control of values and temperature will be covered. Discussion will then cover the ratio and proportion of your canvas so that the canvas fits your painting composition, not the other way around. Gridding the composed image onto canvas will be covered. Even if your primary medium is watercolor or pastel, the principles will still be the same. Depending upon you skill and speed, at least one painting will be completed. Landscape photographs will be used to keep the images simple

Beginning Oil Painting

Contrary to popular opinion oil painting is actually the one of the most forgiving painting mediums to use. Unlike watercolors you can cover up problems and unlike acrylics, oils dry the same color that you put on the canvas and your blending time is longer than acrylic. Drying time can be controlled. Using the landscape as subject, students will learn the fundamentals of oil painting: paint, brushes, and medium. A strong emphasis will be on color mixing while creating good compositions. Students will bring several photos of landscapes that they would like to consider for painting.