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