Course Description

My Teaching Philosophy-

I believe that everyone can learn to paint. I love to paint and I have spent thousands of hours working at it since I was a child. All that time and experimentation with art materials added up to a body of knowledge that allows me to paint with confidence and predict in advance the results of mixing certain colors, working into still-wet colors, and which scenes in nature would be likely to make effective paintings. I believe that anyone who had spent as much time experimenting with paints and finding out what did or didn’t work could have a similar level of ability.

The challenging thing for me to impart to beginning painters is that this is true. Many people have the idea that you are either talented or not. I would suggest that there are certain ways to make a painting that are more or less effective, just like there are more or less effective ways to build a house, cook a meal, or fix a car. Each of these activities can seem intimidating or nearly impossible to the uninitiated, but with guidance from an experienced person each is teachable to a beginner.

The great advantage of taking a workshop or lesson is that you benefit from your teacher’s experience and this can greatly speed up your rate of learning over someone who is using trial and error to figure things out. Sometimes the rate of learning can be literally hundreds of times faster than trial and error; faster learning and improvement is just more fun than slower progress. While the rate of progress is, of course, ultimately determined by the level and consistency of a student’s commitment to learning and improving, a workshop can rocket you toward your painting goals like nothing else can.

Every artistic concept I teach in a workshop is practical to use. I explain why the concept is important, what benefits you will receive by using it in your own work, and how to use it in your wn work. The painting exercises I have developed for students allow them to focus on one concept at a time. The concepts can then be used in combination to create different artistic strategies for painting. Having different strategies at your disposal means you can choose the most effective one for any particular scene you are about to paint.

Please view the course description for my upcoming workshop (October 25th and 26th, 2008) entitled: BUMP UP THE COLOR - How to use the vibrant colors of the Impressionists to fill your paintings with light.