Monday, November 9, 2009

teaching

over the years, as part of my art business, i have taught private one on one painting lessons in my own personal art studio. once in awhile i do get the chance to teach for VineArts in a workshop capacity to numerous people. i have taught 3 abstract workshops over the last 4 years. this last weekend i had the opportunity to teach a pastels workshop. i taught some basics of utilizing soft pastels and oil pastels. i had 10 artists join me for 3 hours and we enjoyed playing with the 2 mediums together. it was a good time of experimenting with new techniques. pastels were my medium of choice when i first started out as a full time artist. many of the paintings that i sold during those first few years of dedicating my life to art were mainly oil pastel paintings. i encouraged the artists in my workshop to not be afraid to push themselves beyond what they might normally do with the tiny stick chalk & crayon like mediums and have fun with them. this might mean trying short strokes of color layering dark to light creating an impressionistic look...it might mean using your fingers to mix & blend colors onto the papers...it might mean using water and a watercolor brush with the soft pastels to get a wash watercolor paint effect....or it might mean applying the oil pastels thickly with pressure and using a pallet knife to create texture like an oil painting. the workshop seemed to spark interest for all who attended and each created amazing paintings full of vibrant color and life.





if you're interested in upcoming VineArts workshops, please keep checking our webpage at: http://www.vineyardboise.org (click on Ministries at the top, that will give you a drop down menu, click on VineArts under the heading Worship, there will be links you can go to for info on various subjects)

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