I’m excited to announce that I’ll be teaching two brand-new online workshops at The Winslow Art Center starting on September 4 and 5th!
The Figure: Graceful and Loose
Mondays, Sept. 4 - 25
This workshop will help you breathe life and grace into your figurative work.
Working from photo references, you’ll learn the techniques for creating accurate proportion and form, as well a sense of movement and energy.
The workshop will address faces, hands and feet, and different ages and skin tones.
As well, you’ll learn to compose your figure in its environment using a shape-based approach that focuses on what your painting needs rather than what the photo contains. This approach will help you tackle the conundrum of “what to do with the background?”and teach you how to weave the figure into its environment in a painterly way.
Figure painting is a joyful process. You’ll learn to address it with a logical methodology and a playful spirit.
This workshop is suitable for any medium that uses color. My demos will be in oil.
To register, please go to the Winslow Art Center website.
Creating Harmony in Your Paintings
Tuesdays, Sept. 5 - 26
Harmonious work has an inner coherence. There are no unconsidered shapes, colors, or marks and every element works together to form a pleasing, unified painting.
This workshop will explore several methods for achieving harmony in your work. We’ll focus on manipulating colour, key, brushwork, and other principles of design to make paintings that have a satisfying visual logic.
You’ll work on targeted exercises from still life set ups in your own studio to explore the concepts from each lesson. Then, you’ll apply what you’ve learned to photo references in other genres: figurative, landscape, portrait etc. The methods that you learn will help you create harmonious work no matter what subject you’re painting.
This workshop is suitable for any medium that uses color. My demos will be in oil.
Register here.
How my online workshops work:
If you’ve never taken my online workshops before, here’s how they work:
The lessons are 3 hours/week for 4 weeks. I assign homework each week but I understand if you can’t always do the assignments. Life gets busy:) Homework is uploaded to our private message board which becomes a lively place full of paintings and comments from participants and me.
At the start of each class, I critique - with kindness- each submitted painting. I point out and celebrate parts of the painting that are working well, and offer suggestions for how to improve weak passages. My students have told me that they learn as much from the critiques of so many different works as they do from the demos.
The remainder of the lesson time is demos. I don’t pre-record them because I like to be able to respond to questions in both words and paint. If someone asks me why I chose a certain colour, I can easily demonstrate how different the painting would be if I’d made that colour darker, lighter, warmer, or cooler.
I welcome and encourage lots of questions during class. It lets me know what I need to clarify and it also creates a great atmosphere. There are few things as wonderful as a room full of painters talking about paint!
All of the lessons are recorded and are available for viewing within 24 hours and they remain available for 60 days after the final class.
I think that covers it, but if you have any questions, leave a comment and I’ll answer.
I hope to see you online:)
Happy painting!