Dear Subscribers,
Above is the recording of the live painting class from 21st July. There was a lot of interest and many new subscribers wanting to join the class, so I will be making these live sessions a regular occurrence for paying subscribers.
The next live class will be on Sunday, 25th August, starting at 4pm BST (8am PDT).
The classes are typically about 3 hours long. Zoom login details are below, and you can join or leave at any time. If you can’t join for any reason or miss part of the session, I will be recording it and publishing it here afterwards. For the next class, I am open to requests, so let me know in the comments if there is something you would be interested to see me tackle, either in terms of subject or an aspect of the painting process. I also invite you to paint at the same time if you want and share anything you are working on during the class if you like. The classes are informal and an opportunity to chat about any aspects of painting that interest you.
I intended the format of the previous class to be quite informal, but I wanted to explore ways of ‘Starting’. If you watch the class, you can hear that I was hoping to start in an ‘impressionistic’ manner, where colour relationships are the primary concern rather than drawing and value. As it turned out, I didn’t manage to stay on course and reverted to a ‘value-led block-in’ approach (see my newsletter on ‘Making a Start’ for the different ways of starting) – old habits can be hard to break! I got into further difficulty in terms of drawing with quite a lot of correction needed in that respect.
I don’t think it was a total loss though because I felt that a more abstract and loose quality was gained through not prioritising drawing and shape to begin with. If I had managed to be more alert to sticking to my original intention of an impressionistic style block-in, then I should have been using ‘spots’ of colour to capture the light effect rather than reverting to value and shape, as is my usual approach. As I mention in class, I don’t think these different types of block-in exist in a pure form in practice. I think it’s more a case of what visual aspect one is emphasising at different points in the painting process. I hope you find the recording interesting and look forward to seeing you in a future class!
Happy painting,
Alex
