Experiment in Ecstasy: Intuitive and Spontaneous Painting
Location: Scottsdale Location
Room: TBD
Jan 24-28, 2011
Meets 9:00 AM-4:00 PM
on Mon Tue Wed Th Fri
Tuition: $585.00
Level: BEG-INT
Status: This program is completed
Abandon fear all ye who enter here! Don’t worry about producing a masterpiece. Don’t be attached to outcomes. We’ll work in mixed-media: acrylics, gesso, and collage. We’ll stamp, layer, pour, draw with aquastics, water-soluble crayons and pencils. We’ll do a relief painting and make our own collage paper. Everybody will get different results. We’ll work transparently, and we’ll work opaquely. Sometimes we'll combine the two. We’ll talk about content, design, color and experiment with different approaches, concepts, and techniques emphasizing different ways of working with a variety of subject matter, from landscape and interiors to the figure. Each day will bring new information combining traditional wisdom with modern ways of looking at painting. We will work BOLDLY and subtlety. Come with an open mind.
- Artist demonstrations
- Daily critiques
- Variety of subject matter
Instructor -- Betsy Dillard Stroud
Betsy Dillard Stroud, AWS D. F. NWS, is a nationally acclaimed artist with signatures in many prestigious organizations, including the National Watercolor Society and the American Watercolor Society in which she is also a Dolphin Fellow. An active and popular workshop instructor since 1987, Stroud has taught nationally and internationally and has judged over fifty international, national, regional, and state exhibitions. Stroud is also the author of the books: Painting from the Inside Out and The Artists Muse: Unlock the Door to Your Creativity.
- Plenty of paper: both hot press and cold press: full sheets only
- A support for your paper cut to the dimensions of 31 by 23. You can purchase at Home Depot a material called Foamular, which is easy to cut, comes in big sheets and will make four supports. It costs about ten dollars.
- Brushes of various sizes including a two or three inch synthetic brush for big washes; other brushes that comes in handy are a script liner, or rigger. Make sure you have both round and flats.
- Paint: Both fluid acrylics and tube acrylics. Bring what you have. It’s always good to have the following colors: in fluids; quinacridones magenta, quinacridone nickel azo gold; phthalo turquoise; quinacridone crimson; phthalo blue; ultramarine blue; indian yellow or hanza yellow; and any other pigments that you like. In tubes, bring the same colors that you have in fluids, but also add some opaque pigments, like lavender and shell pink; naples yellow; pigments that obviously have white added to them. I also like the pigments; medium magenta, parchment, or titanium buff, and portrait pink or flesh pink. Great opaque paints are made by Holbein and can be purchased at some catalogue stores or at the Black Horse Gallery (google it) in Vermont. Liquitex also has good tube colors.
- tube acrylics in carbon, ivory or mars black and titanium white.
- Several pieces of rice paper or other papers to collage.
- Soft Linoleum stamps and a lino cutter. Make sure you get the stamps that are soft on both sides. Speedball makes a pink stamp that is easy to cut, as do Staedler and Daniel Smith.
- Drawing instruments like water-soluble crayons and/or pencils.
- A jar, tube, or fluid container of interference or iridescent pigment. I like interference Gold.
- Fluid white gesso
- fluid black gesso;
- matte medium
- A notebook to take notes in
- Two big water containers
- A mat for a full sheet (fold in half if flying with a portfolio.)
- Kleenex and paper towels
- Murphy’s oil soap, scrubber, comet and windex (for students who live near to bring.)
- A hair dryer
- Photographs in your collection of interesting subjects to paint.
- A good palette and in addition, several lean cuisine containers to mix matte medium in and gesso. I use a butcher's tray as a palette.
- Several pieces of newspaper
- You might consider bringing other things you can imprint with like cardboard, and if you like stencils, bring some.
- Most importantly, come with the knowledge that you are going to have fun as well as learn some interesting things!