In this two day workshop, students will spend a day exploring portrait painting, and a day on composition, with a focus on working through their prior paintings to improve them.

Day One

Do you find yourself picking up those small brushes too soon? Do you wish you could see more and different colors in your images? Do some colors scare you? Do you always intend to loose some edges but then find your finished paintings very tight?

In the first day, Kathy will provide an overview of facial structure, and review the requirements for good reference materials. She will review planning steps, including criteria for selecting substrates. Attendees will work on expanding their color palette and then applying what they learn to working from photographs.

Attendees will work on creating focus, simplifying, and using the photograph as a starting point to explore color and lose edges. We will work on finding centers of interest and focusing our detail in the area of the center of interest.

We will also work on creating color unity, painting large areas of light and dark, creating backgrounds and losing edges and using color to create interest and emotion.

Attendees will apply what they have learned about drawing and color and work from their photograph. We will explore what makes a good photograph to work from and how to crop the photograph to create interest and emotion for the viewer.
Day Two

You have mastered techniques and are proficient with your preferred media, but are you satisfied with the art you create? Does your finished work communicate your vision?   We can all improve our composition to enhance our work and make it more successful.  

We all want to dive in and create our work.  However, without adequate planning, our creations generally are not as effective as they could be. By improving our compositions, we make our work more effective in communicating our vision and focusing our viewer.

Composition includes the layout of our image, as well as design elements such as unity, contrast, repetition, movement, shapes, value, color and edges.  

In the workshop, Kathy and the attendees will work through composition exercises. Attendees will use their own reference images and still life materials on hand to develop enhanced compositions.  Attendees will not need to acquire new supplies, as they will be using their preferred media.  We will explore digital applications that help us examine our works.  We will also conduct a portfolio review of the work of each student, discussing how each work succeeds and how it could be enhanced.