Tag: cool stuff

Hey there.  Just surfacing from my studio overhaul to talk about my next class.  I'm really excited to be teaching at Pratt School of Continuing and Professional Studies in Manhattan this fall.  It's such a cool place, and the studios are amazing.  How cool would be to say you took a class at Pratt?  

So first up is ROLL WITH IT, SUNDAY, OCTOBER 4TH.  I started teaching this one over ten years ago and it is still one of my favorites. It has evolved over the years to include new tricks.  First debuting at Artfest 2004, then Artwerx, Valley Ridge, The Ink Pad, CREATE,…it's definitely a crowd pleaser.  If you want a fun day of learning lots of painting tricks, or you want to refresh your view of using paint, come roll with me!  (Scroll down for some evidence of past workshops).

ROLL WITH IT workshop, is fast moving class where I demo a technique and then you try it. In my own experiments with creating texture I have found the magic properties of gesso.  Gesso affords movement, lifting, resisting, but most of all it allows forgiveness.  We will learn why it's an important foundation. For example, on a section of roll, we will try a two-step painting process.  Next, we’ll reverse the process with step two first, followed by step one.  This will allow us to learn from our observations.  There is no right or wrong way to lay paint, but hopefully these exercises will inform your future work.  We will scrape, stencil, resist, stamp, and so much more.  The swift pace will leave the inner critique out of the process as it's all about doing the work.  The completed length will then be assembled as a journal.  As you fold the page you end up with serendipitous compositions that you never would have planned as the techniques segue from one to another.  

FORMAT:  I will demo a technique then you will try it on your paper.  Then I demo again, and you try it. Repeat.  Repeat.  Repeat.  We will be moving fast so we can complete many different things.  It’s important to let go of your concern for perfect composition since this is not the focus of the class.  There are no rules here, except to move swiftly so we can plow through the assignments, leaving time toward the end of class for the finishing touch of creating a book from our roll.  It always amazes me, with each time I teach this class, how different each journal can look even though we all followed the same directions. Each artist has a different hand and an unique way of interpreting the exercises with their own color palette.

ORIGIN:  When I was in college, one of my drawing classes began each morning with an exercise in gesture drawing of the nude models.  The models made quick, thirty second poses, which we scribbled onto a roll of paper.  After about five minutes(ten gesture drawings), we rolled the paper back up and continued with the day’s assignment.  At the end of the course, we posted our rolls of paper onto a display wall, and it was amazing to chart our growth as sketch artists, across the length of the roll.  Remembering the impact of this exercise, I began imagining how cool it would be to compose something similar with paint, for a short amount of time everyday, on a roll of paper.  I could experiment randomly on the roll, and also use it to catch evidence of work-in-progress on my studio table (cleaning off my brush, clippings of collage, etc)…..then, the completed roll could be manipulated into a book, a foundation for journaling.  I ended up finishing about 30 feet of painted roll and got excited to see what it would look like as a journal so I stopped and figured out how to fold the length into a book – and a class was born!

Hope you'll join me!