Instruction and Workshops
THE OBJECTIVES OF MY WORKSHOPS AND THEIR STRUCTURAL OVERVIEW
To present to the students a comprehensive and structured path to building their visual language, concepts for understanding and developing artistic observation and how this differs from pedestrian (day to day) observation, and methods for translating these visual concepts into graphic statements. These concepts and methods are the foundation of illusionary drawing and painting and the building blocks for producing representational art i.e. portraiture, figurative, landscape etc... I believe strongly in my chosen medium of the graphic arts and I believe that exposure to this medium of representational art is a rewarding endeavor and the concepts and methods presented in my workshops will enhance any journey taken in the graphic arts.
The basic structural design of my workshops are steps or blocks followed in a linear path in which I will describe and demonstrate the step or block then I’ll have the students do the block or step while I move from student to student to give individual instruction. In this way I and the students move together on the project I work right along with the students it’s not a situation where I lecture and demonstrate and turn the time over to the students but we work as a group on the painting or drawing.
The focus of this day and a half drawing workshop is to broaden a students drawing skills to include the forms and light of our three dimensional world and engage the unique properties required to translate volumetric form, in space and light, to a two dimensional drawing surface. My intent is not help students complete finished drawings but through the act of drawing experience a brief but visually engaged witness to the vastness and complexity of our visual world which lies unseen by most; with my workshops' focus in mind I have divided the time into three segments each related but each addressing progressively more complex visual problems. First using simple shapes and more geometrical in form as subjects with a predominate light source then secondly plaster cast figures and skull with again predominate light source and finally using my dog and myself as models to experience drawing live breathing forms.