In this six week online workshop, you will learn to paint the still life: practice composition, color, and get feedback on your work.

The genre of still life painting can take on many different forms, especially in today’s contemporary art world. In this six week online course we will work on expanding our perception of what a still life can be, which at it’s most interesting is an exploration of the formal properties of composition, color and form.

We will begin each class with looking at examples of great still life painting, past and present. We’ll discuss the virtues of the works being viewed and work on  incorporating those qualities into our work.

The first class will be devoted to searching out a motif from everyday objects in our surroundings. We’ll arrange and rearrange those objects and discuss what organization of those objects creates the most compelling and satisfying design. We will then proceed with making various thumbnail sketches of the setup.

The second class will be devoted to doing a small color study of the arrangement.

During the final four sessions we’ll decide on a size for the final painting and then launch into painting it. 

The participants will see how my painting evolves from week to week and experience the thought process and myriad of decisions which go into putting a painting together. They will see the troubleshooting process which I employ when problems with the painting inevitably arise and see how, ideally these changes can benefit the painting in various ways.

Course participants will develop their own paintings in this step by step process after watching each online class during the six weeks. 

There will be two review processes, one after the color sketch is completed and one at the end of the course. The reviews will be in groups of 10 participants through Zoom.