People doing portraits

My Tuesday portrait drawing and painting classes have passed the point of the study of the placement and proportions and all the planes of the individual parts and individual parts and have now moved into the nitty gritty. The first challenge being to drawing a self portrait in the mirror.

We often quickly go over this review of order and placement of the facial features.

 We have to remind to burn it into our mind.

For future reference and to train our eye.

That way the parts are put in the right place in proper proportion from the start.

We want these to like like someone we should know very well.

By the end of the class they begin to.

 In paint we block in dark and light.

And pay homage to the gift that is our parents.

Sample this

If you have never painted before, there is no real reason to be afraid.......

Try an oil or acrylic "Sampler" with me at Swinton's art supply and instruction one Sunday!

Get an overview of the process and all materials are included so you can try your hand at something new and creative.

 You will leave with some experience

 and your first painting

 and a head full of info

 and you will know know whether or not its for you

 and then again, you always have the choice

to paint right over it and start over anyhow!

Oil Sampler at Swinton's

I taught an oil sampler at Swinton's this Sunday before going up to the final showing and take down of my show at the New Edward Gallery. Here are some pics of my set up and some of the fantastic first time students at work on their first oil paintings.

Not bad, eh?
I must be a pretty good instructor ;P

Colour theory final review.

We reached the end of my Colour theory for painters course at ACAD and I did a final class discussion and review to see what they remember and to build these crazy whiteboard notes based on their retention.

 Below are a few pics of some of the final projects etc.

Colour, who doesn't love it?!

As creative people artists are really drawn to colour. Candy  for your eyes.

I am teaching Colour Theory for Painters at ACAD this semester and it is really shaping up to be a great class.  It is so much fun, it seems like class time just disappears in the blink of an eye. Here is a peek as to what we have been up to in the past few classes, seeing all this colour may interest you, maybe this is a class you'll be interested in learning colour theory and taking this class with me in the future.

The glorious colour wheel. I assigned students a very limited palette in which to create the secondary and tertiary colours with.

Others opted for a different challenge and worked with warm and cool variations of each hue.

Or blending with transparency to create something that reminds me of the "spinning wheel of death" on my mac laptop.

The majority of work, insofar, is done on the palette and the notes are what are transferred in these swatches and diagrams.

I like how each students work space looks, the variation in tools and scattering of materials.

My demo area is just as chaotic. I do bag my oils in separate zip top bags per colour, but when its time to get creative, we all know, order goes out the window in the chaos of passion :D

A dozen ways, a dozen days....what am I doing these days?

Keeping it up as any bunny would and could. I made this video from the studio of a piece I am slowly nudging toward completion. Check out the video on my you tube channel by clicking on the video below. It's only 5 min of your time deep in my thoughts and goals.

Sunday Sampler at Swintons (January 24, 2016)

I mourn my computer and use one at work during lunch to post this. A great many things are happening but you'd never know since I haven't been able to post lately. A couple of lovely ladies at the Off beat drawing event on Friday night swear its "mercury retrograde" that caused my digital misfortune, though I don't believe that for a minute. Dropping it was definitely the culprit.

 Yesterday I had a terrific oil sampler at Swinton's. You wouldn't know it by the serious look on my face.  But it was FUN and went well. I changed the format of the session and I think it worked fantastic. The next one is full but there are more coming up so just visit Swinton's website and look for samplers if you are interested in signing up. http://swintonsart.com

I had some repeat students which warms my heart, and believe it or not, the majority who tried oil for the first time had never painted before either. Its a challenging medium but totally worth it..... beautiful, creamy and rich I cant say enough good things about oil, I love it. I look forward to inspiring more new budding artists, there is a lot of passion and know how in my brain that I'd love to share around :D