Saturday, March 31, 2012

The Process of teaching : Palette Knife Workshop - Landscapes

This is a little bit about my approach to teaching a one day workshop.
 I had a wonderful group show up for a 5 hour workshop today at Spruill. I know that it's a lot of information in a short amount of time. We covered some of the various techniques of the palette knife, along with a little color theory, and composition. 
Okay, maybe I should call it palette knife boot camp. 
I just like the idea of learning new techniques while working on a painting. 
Somethings will work, some not, ahh, that's better than just writing your abc over and over, right?
The first thing I do is work through the painting Alla Prima, which just means I do the painting in one sitting. I work wet paint into wet paint instead of working in stages and allowing paint to dry.
Once I have completed the painting once, I will break it down into stages.  By bringing in several different canvases showing the building process, I hope this will give the class a visual aid as I am lecturing and demonstrating in class.
Now I am ready to teach class.  I start with a talk about composition, value scale, tricks for landscape painting, and just how to prepare the canvas.  Now the class is ready to create their masterpieces.   Well, I  always throw in a little color theory through the class, but just in small doses.

Let the paintings begin!

I have my sample steps up. I hope that these will help show where I am going.  Also, it  is always helpful to see how just messy a palette knife painting can be while you are working on it.
This is one of the paintings I worked on in the workshop today.

I had a wonderful class today. Thank you for all the artists that came out and spent their Saturday with me. Keep up the good work.

Cheers,
Dawn

Sunday, March 18, 2012

New painting demos from my winter classes

12x16 Demo for the palette knife workshop at Spruill in Feb (acrylics) 
9x10 Demo for the palette knife class at SCAD Atlanta  this March  (oils)

Oil painting class at GA TECh 16 x 16 - brush and palette knife

Ocean and Sky class and Callanwolde 36 x 48 - okay - lot's of color theory thrown in there as well. (oils)

20x24 Ocean and Water one day workshop demo at Callanwolde. (acrylics)

12 x 16 Ocean and Sky demo one day workshop at Spruill. (oils)