New Art Class

I began a new art class on January 23, new instructor, new ways of thinking, new methods, new techniques, new in every way. The artist center is a 50 mile round trip venture, and with the notoriously bad traffic in Atlanta, you might understand why I put off enrolling. An artist friend and former instructor encouraged me to give this new instructor a go, and so far, I'm happy with the way things are going.

We began with the basics in Week 1 - that's right, the ol' value study!! Once we proved we understood value, we moved to copying Bargue plates.

Copying Bargue plates is an old school teaching method designed to educate students about light, shadow and dimension. It also helps with measuring and learning about gradations of value. Lots of famous artists studied Bargue, including Picasso, Van Gogh and John Singer Sargent. Bargue was a student of Gerome's, another very influential artist and teacher of many well known artists.

After working on the Bargue plates, I moved onto a drawing of John Singer Sargent's "Oyster Gatherers of Cancale."

On Week 4 I moved from the drawing tables to the easels! We had our choice of pears or apples. I chose pears. I drew the pears, then my instructor laid out the paints in my palette box.

I took my materials home and worked on the pears in my studio, then brought the painting back in Week 5 and worked on it some more.

There's a LOT going on in the photo below, so let me explain:

First, that's my painting on the easel. See the white lines in between the blocks of colors? Those are transition areas, where the values transition from darker to lighter across the pear. Those are the areas I will work on next.

You'll also see a ruler above my drawing, on the left, with values from light to dark. And the photo we're painting from is clipped on the right. And finally, on top is a guide to understanding cools, warms and gradations.

I've always had this romantic idea of an artist dipping her brush from one gorgeous color to the next, intuitively placing brush strokes in all the right places. Waving a brush around like a magician's wand, the artist says the magic words and POOF, the next thing you know, you have a masterpiece!

Well, it's not quite like that. The method we're learning is very formulaic, values 4 to 8 on the bright side, 12 to 15 on the dark side. There are elements of magic ... the artist makes calculated decisions on where and what to accentuate, but you have to learn the basics, the tools and how they work before you can put yourself into a work of art and "guide" the viewer through your painting.

I have a 3-day workshop that starts tomorrow, so I'm doing a brain dump before I switch gears and listen to a totally different voice for the next several days. I almost wish I wasn't going to the workshop because I'm worried that the training there will confuse me and spoil the routines I've established over the last several weeks.

The workshop instructor is Cindy Baron, a highly respected watercolor/oil artist. She's teaching at the Booth Western Art Museum in Cartersville. I'll have updates soon!