June Classes Offered

I'm offering four classes this June, all on Thursdays at the usual time, 11:30-2:30. The first two will be in my home, and the second two back at the classroom at Paradise Methodist. The charge is only $25.00 at the door. Reservations are required for the first two, as space is limited.


June 9--Paint the Summer Sky and Clouds 
(at Paradise Methodist Church)

Our summertime skies are spectacular, with layers of beautiful clouds, summer thunderstorms, and beautiful virga falling. We'll discuss how to paint various kinds of clouds, looking at the structure, color, contrasts and 'rules' of clouds in the daytime summer sky. Any medium is welcome.





June 16--Gouache Basics
(*in my home)

'Fall Reds', gouache

Gouache is opaque watercolor and has all the positive characteristics of watercolor and pastel. Like pastel, you can work from the darks and add the light colors over the top, as well as correcting as many times as you need to, and as in watercolor you can work wet into wet, use washes and various other techniques. I'll teach the basics at this small class. We'll work from photograph, share the same color paints, play around with different brushes, and just find out what this fun and versatile medium can do. I'll provide two different kinds of paper, and the paint and brushes for an extra cost of $10, or you may bring your own. You'll need a small palette of some kind, such as a white dish or plate, or a plastic watercolor palette, and a small jar for water.

This class is limited to five students, on a first come basis, so please reserve now if you want to take part.
Please let me know if you want to see another class like this one offered and I will form another session when we have enough participation.

June 23--How to use Photoshop for Paintings
(* in my home)

I'll show you how I use Photoshop to prepare photographs to use for paintings. I use Photoshop Elements 2.0, but the tools I utilize are commonly available in Photoshop, no matter the version, so you should be able to adapt what I do.

The space available at my computer is quite small, so we're limited to only four students

FULL--if you want to sign up for another class like this one, please let me know. As soon as there are four who want to sign up I'll organize the day and time.

 
June 30--Paint the Night Sky
(at Paradise Methodist Church)

We'll explore painting the landscape at night, with a closer look at the night sky. I'll challenge you to cobble together two or more photos to create a nighttime landscape with a dramatic sky, perhaps including clouds, the moon or stars.

Memory Painting class results

We had an intimate class...but fun and productive! I think this class is most helpful in showing you how much you rely on the photo or not. That alone can be so instructive. We talked about how the "bones" of a painting appeal most to artists, while the "skin" seems to matter more to the viewer.

I used this photo for my demo.

I spent some time looking at it and deciding where the major shapes resided, using my hand to 'paint' it. For instance, the large cloud shape along the left-hand edge stops about 2/3 of the way up, where the right-hand cloud is approximately half way. Each mass extends beyond the middle halfway mark, so they can each be described by circles that overlap slightly.

After gazing at the photo for a few minutes and analyzing it well, I put it behind me on a desk (where I couldn't cheat and sort of 'see' it--that's just too tempting!) I painted one pass over the paper to record the memorized shapes and colors and arrived at this:

It's painted using PanPastels on a piece of yellow Pastelmat paper, giving it a lovely soft focus, slightly blended look. I felt the colors were creeping into the sunset hour, so I pushed it that direction, adding a hint of color to the sky suggesting the setting sun is off to the right. This came about as I painted, not as a result of the photograph. I checked the details more as I progressed, to find the various cloud shapes when needed, but freed myself to make a painting out of it that contained my own ideas.

I hope you'll enjoy using this technique yourself.

Have fun, gang!
Deborah