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)

This class includes a lecture and hands-on workshop. Joy’s lecture will discuss how to present your art professionally on an artist’s budget, designing an efficient workspace, and the basic tools of the trade needed to repurpose and craft beautiful one-of-a-kind frames. She will give a demonstration on constructing a frame, glass cutting, and assembling a framed piece of art with basic framing tools. You will walk away with a list of tools and knowledge to create your own winning combinations.

This two-day workshop includes a lecture and demonstration on the use of controlled lighting for a consistent light source resembling natural light. The hands-on portion of the workshop will be a day and a half of working together on still-life setups using various artificial lighting techniques. We will go through a series of steps that will demonstrate some of the various lighting options, as well as using light and shadow as part of the compositional element. Once a satisfactory setup has been established with both the still life and the lighting, participants will be given the option to paint a color sketch of the still life from their setup or continue by working with different light and or setups. If painting, this will enable you to work through the process of painting with and from artificial light.

Lecture and demonstration on the use of controlled lighting for a consistent light source resembling natural light.