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June 2020 - Classes & Workshops

If you are interested to sign-up to any of the classes please, send me an email. Plein air classes are weather permitting,
I always send out a confirmation or cancellation (if weather turns for the worse) e-mail to those who sign up, as the date gets closer.

Plein air class I.
Location: Winston-Salem, water lily pond
Date:  Saturday, June 6th
Time: 9:00 am - noon   Fee: $40

Plein air class II.
Date:  Friday, June 19th
Winston-Salem Park TBA
Time: 9:00 - noon
Class fee: $40 

 ONLINE CLASS - Learn to Paint Roses
4 Weeks on Tuesdays
Start date: June 30th - July 21st
Start time: 9:00 am (the length of each session is tentative)
Fee: $160

FOR MORE INFO CLICK HERE

WORKSHOP
Florence Thomas Art School
Location: Blue Ridge Mountains, West Jefferson, NC
Date: Saturday, June 13-14
Time: 9:00 am -4:00 pm
There are only a couple of spots left.
For more info and registration please click here. 

 
 Here are a few tips that should be helpful when painting outdoors:

•  Often when we are unhappy with our painting, the problem is with the values. In order to record them accurately, always compare the chosen area's values to its' neighboring values. Our eyes get fatigued by looking at one area for a long time and consequently we have a hard time to read values correctly.
• Same is true for colors. Instead of staring at an area trying to figure out what the color might be start comparing it to it's immediate surroundings. 
• Also important to wear neutral color clothing as well as toning the canvas to a neutral warm color (ahead of time) 
• use thumbnail sketches to work out your composition 
•  Always make sure that there is no sunlight on your canvas, and possibly neither on your palette. Direct sunlight completely distorts values and colors. Thus best place to paint is  in the shade (if possible).  

Anyone who wants to learn to paint landscape painting the best place to practice  is outdoors. As with every other subject it is important to work from life, especially if you are not a seasoned painter who has painted hundreds of paintings plein air.  

There are many limitations of a camera and the image it captures. The camera gives even “weight”to everything, meaning everything is in focus. When we are outside and look at the landscape our eyes and mind find the most interesting and appealing parts of the scenery, and we are able to focus on those only, blocking out everything else.  

Also, we see colors for what they are as opposed to distorted versions of reality. The same is true for values, a camera has a hard time capturing high contrast areas, it's either under exposes one or overexposes the other. Resulting in a photo void of what inspired us in the first place.   

That's being said  plein air painting has to be practiced  regularly before one can become proficient in it. Especially because it is more than just copying. Like with every other subject we need to learn how to “translate” the scenery, and what inspired us, onto the canvas, leaving out unnecessary elements and emphasizing important ones.   

The sense of urgency, due to the changing light and weather conditions helps to simplify and eliminate detail, it also helps us paint more instinctively.   

Isaak Ilyich Levitan, (1860- 1900),  Lithuanian-born Jewish painter who was one of Russia’s most influential landscape artists and the founder of what has been called the “mood landscape.”

Levitan’s childhood and youth were marked by poverty and the death of his parents; his mother died when he was 15 years old and his father, a railroad worker, two years later. 

In September 1873, Isaac Levitan entered the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. As patronage for Levitan's talent and achievements, his Jewish origins and to keep him in the school, he was given a scholarship. 

In 1877, Isaac Levitan's works were first publicly exhibited and earned favorable recognition from the press

In September 1892 Jews were  expelled from Moscow and Levitan left the city for Boldino. His friends' pleadings enabled him to return by December of that year.

In 1897, already world-famous, he was elected to the Imperial Academy of Arts and in 1898 he was named the head of the Landscape Studio at his alma mater.

Levitan spent the last year of his life at Chekhov’s home in Crimea. In spite of the effects of a terminal illness (he suffered from a heart condition for much of his life), his last works are increasingly filled with light. They reflect tranquility and the eternal beauty of Russian nature.

His choice of subject was dictated by mood.

Levitan was everyone’s landscape artist. . The personal element he brought to traditional objective landscape painting earned him the admiration of all those inspired by the Russian landscape.

(credit: Encyclopedia Britannica)..