Still Life in Paint & Pastel

Description

Still life work is a fantastic way to build drawing and painting skills. The sheer variety of objects in the world–all with their own shapes, colors, patterns and textures–provide a nearly limitless array of challenges for developing artists to tackle. By doing lots of still life, and solving lots of different problems, students can build a deep repository of experiences that can broaden their overall abilities at the easel.

This still life class–our first ever in a live streaming format–will present methods for executing a beautiful still life via two simultaneous, extended demonstrations over 6 weeks.

As with most of our Live Streaming Classes, this class will feature two instructors. Working from the same reference image, instructor Melinda Whitmore will demonstrate a still life painting in oil paint, while David Jamieson will draw the same image in pastel. Students are free to choose which medium they’d prefer to work with, and follow along with that instructor, while still gaining insight from the other demo.

This “two pronged” approach to teaching is a hallmark of Live Streaming Classes at Vitruvian Studio. Two instructors, working simultaneously, allows for cross-pollination of ideas, techniques and concepts that enriches the learning experience for everyone. In each demo, the focus will be on developing a beautiful still life arrangement with a convincing sense of light and 3-dimensionality. Discussion of color development will happen at the materials level (colorant selection and mixing strategies), supported by theoretical concepts including 3-dimensional “color space” and the Munsell system.

This class will be streamed live on Zoom every week for 6 weeks. The primary class session will meet between 1:00pm and 4:00pm on Sunday afternoons (Central Time), when the instructors will teach and demonstrate on-camera. Each class session will focus on a particular stage of the process, and students are encouraged to work along with the instructors and ask questions in real time. For students unable to attend the live on Sundays, a recording of each class session will be available for 7 days until it is replaced with the subsequent week’s video. That way, there’s a full week available to get caught up if you miss anything, or to review any concepts presented.

A high-quality photo reference of the still life arrangement will be made available to all students at the beginning of the class. This will be the same reference the instructors will be using, and as such, we’ll all be able to work with the same arrangement, from the same point of view – something not possible with traditional on-ground classes where we work from life. Another advantage of this format is that students will be able to work on their still lifes between classes, although we recommend not getting too far ahead of the demo each week.