Students begin by drawing a plaster cast in charcoal, developing their ability to render accurate proportions and value relationships. After students finish a charcoal cast drawing, they are introduced to the fundamentals of oil techniques in grisaille, paint handling, and modeling form. Once this has been achieved, students may progress to still-life painting in oil, working on values, color relationships and composition.

This is a wonderful class to learn the basics of watercolor and drawing and advance to more complicated watercolors. Gain knowledge of the richness of warm and cool colors, understand the nature of their relationship, and learn how opaque and transparent colors work together.

Begin with simple studies and advance to still life, landscape, and portrait. Instruction includes lots of individual help.

The goal of this course is to sharpen drawing ability and technique. Students will be guided through completing a single drawing from a reproduction in the Charles Bargue Drawing Course. The process will take students from the straight line block in to the end stages and subtle finishing. Occasional class exercises will allow students to practice using a variety of tools and techniques. This course is an excellent precursor to sight-size cast drawing and appropriate for all skill levels. Copies will be completed in pencil. Please bring a large 18" x 24" drawing board, HB pencil, and kneaded eraser to first class.

The most crucial part of any artwork is its preliminary stages. In this class, Sawyer will emphasize the most necessary of these stages: the block-in. The goal for this class will be describing the figure as efficiently—and accurately—as possible. Through a series of demonstrations, explanations, optional assignments, and primarily model time, students will be eased into complex topics. Gesture, rhythm, proportions, shape simplification, structure, and notan statements will be discussed and practiced in an approachable manner. There will be no intimidating rendering. This is the meat and potatoes of drawing!

Materials:

• a small drawing board
• medium sized binder clips
• HB pencils (yellow school pencils work fine)
• a pencil sharpener, or blade, and sanding board
• kneaded eraser
• legal-sized bond paper (8.5 x 14 inches) not letter-sized
• Strathmore 400 drawing paper (11 x 14 inches)

Autumn is one of the best times to be out on location studying the landscape as it becomes saturated in color! This fall, Bridget is offering a weekend workshop for students to study the landscape "en plein air." There will be a lecture/demo both mornings where Bridget will talk about seeing color as value, mixing color and a discussion on how to evaluate color intensity based on the effect of light. In the afternoons, Bridget will work with students at their easels. Students of all skill levels are welcome to participate in this workshop, though some experience painting in oil will be helpful for this class. 

This class was designed with your learning in mind. We will talk about all things figure drawing! Students will use graphite pencils to draw the figure. Lecture and demos will accompany drawing time to give the student a strong foundation from which to work. The class information will build systematically. For the first few classes, students will work from a new pose each night with emphasis on accurate proportion and a strong start. Poses will progressively lengthen from 1-4 nights as students learn to render the figure with a step-by-step approach. Topics covered will include gesture, anatomical bone structure, accurate shapes, perspective, and using light and shadow to render form.

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)