Experience our full-time program in a week-long workshop.

Students begin by drawing a plaster cast or still life in charcoal, developing their ability to render accurate proportions and value relationships. As students progress, they are introduced to the fundamentals of oil and/or pastel techniques, composition and color.

Experience our full-time program in a week-long workshop.

Life drawing is at the core of any serious program of fine arts. In the class, students draw from the figure in pencil. Each drawing is created over a period of several sessions, developing the student's eye for accurate proportions, gesture and anatomy.

One-day still-life studies

This class will be focused on one-day oil studies of still lifes in color. The student will begin each class with a quick 20-minute sketch of the still life in paint. The remainder of the day will be focused on color mixing, application, and manipulation of paint on the canvas using brushes or palette knives. Each week will be a new still-life setup in order to study new textures, colors and shapes. Studies, especially done in color paint, are the basis of all finished works. This class attempts to give the student more confidence in applying paint to a surface, relieving the fear of making mistakes in paint by making those mistakes and then correcting them. Only through experimentation with application of paint on the canvas do we learn to create different effects. We will also focus on quick adjustments to value, color, and drawing with differing brushes and mixing color on the palette or directly on the canvas. Some experience in drawing is recommended as much of the class will be in paint application and not perfection of drawing skills. All levels are welcome! This class will not be focused on completing a refined, finished piece but for practice, exploration and fun! This class will use only oil paint and not other mediums. Email Cassandra Ronning at cassandra.ronning@gmail.com for questions and suggested supply list.

This is a 3-day weekend workshop where we study ideas and plan pictures that can grab and captivate our audience. We'll be exploring composition through generating copious amounts of thumbnail sketches; refining, changing, and enhancing our ideas through drawing; and, finally, developing a large loose sketch, based on the previous explorative sketches, to take home for a finished painting.

Fundamentals of composition, value, and picture design are stressed throughout. This is where we discover who we are: marks on paper, with the barest minimum of lines, will flush out and flesh out an idea that lingers just beneath our awareness. As students progress from thumbnails to sketches, we'll also touch on when and how to use reference. On the third day Greg will demonstrate color comps, and students will begin to explore rough color sketches to aid them in the development of their picture beyond this workshop.

Much frustration and head-scratching ensues while we struggle to do our best, but Greg hasn't had a student yet that hasn't come away with an epiphany or two about their work. And we'll have lots of fun in the discovery process. Come with no fear—you're in good hands.

This listing is for the lecture/demo only. See also: Composition for Visual Impact (Full Workshop)