OBJECT LESSONS online workshop with Black Pond Studio. June 18 - July 16, 2025
1 — 4:30 p.m. eastern time
Still life can be anything. Within this wide-open topic, we will focus on fundamental painting principles. Participants will build and light their own inventive and personal setups, and have a week between meetings to explore a series of exercises. Time lends depth to the painted image and frees us to pare down to the essential.
The exercises include:
• Mapping the relationships between objects and the rectangle, using a specific drawing method.
• Exploring different limited palettes to discover the nature of a few paint colors at a time, in terms of opacity, transparency, and relative tinting strength.
• Shape will be central to our approach. Reducing the motif to10-15 shapes will place the focus on color mixing and accurate value structure.
The emphasis will be on observation. Metaphor or personal meaning will come in the back door. Suggested medium: oil paint. We will meet on Zoom and share work on Padlet, an online platform.
THE HEAD EXAMINED at MassArt New England. In person on the Mass Art campus. July 20-26, 2025. This workshop takes a reductive approach to painting the head by seeking the essential. A series of exercises will invite you to break down, simplify, and abstract through observation of a model in a specific lighting condition. The exercises address the shifting nature of perception, beginning with an intuitive drawing method that leads to accuracy of proportion. Light and the way it affects the understanding of structure will be emphasized, along with the specific relationship of the head to the surrounding space. The objective is to reduce the head to the essential to create a truer likeness than a detailed description would. A study of historical and contemporary portraiture will be included. Some drawing and painting experience is recommended. Oil paint is the suggested medium; acrylic paint or gouache can be used.
THE HEAD EXAMINED: THEN AND NOW 2. THIS WORKSHOP IS FULL. April 2 - May 21, 2025. ONLINE AT Black Pond Studio. For the first half of the workshop, portraits from art history will be the point of departure for study of pictorial structure, with a focus on the head. We will touch upon the universal proportions of the head; a simple, intuitive drawing method will be introduced to help with drawing accuracy. Mediums will include graphite, charcoal, collage, gouache, acrylic and/or oil paint or materials you have on hand. Each participant will choose and examine one or two images from art history and generate permutations through exercises that lead to simplification and abstraction. This rigorous and wide-ranging analysis of images from our painting ancestors will feed our own work and imaginations as we engage with images that speak to us still. In the second half of the workshop, you will take the experience from multiple exercises and turn your attention to the head in the mirror. The head we see every day is a meaningful, personal, and convenient subject for a painting. This segment takes a reductive approach to painting the head, seeking how little information is enough. Using paint, we will investigate whether translating the head into a few accurate shapes of color and value can create a truer likeness than a detailed description can. We will meet on Zoom and share work on the Padlet platform.
THE HEAD EXAMINED: THEN AND NOW January 15 -March 12, 2025 THIS WORKSHOP IS FULL. at Black Pond Studio. For the first half of the workshop, portraits from art history will be the point of departure for study of pictorial structure, with a focus on the head. We will touch upon the universal proportions of the head; a simple, intuitive drawing method will be introduced to help with drawing accuracy. Mediums will include graphite, charcoal, collage, gouache, acrylic and/or oil paint or materials you have on hand. Each participant will choose and examine one or two images from art history and generate permutations through exercises that lead to simplification and abstraction. This rigorous and wide-ranging analysis of images from our painting ancestors will feed our own work and imaginations as we engage with images that speak to us still. In the second half of the workshop, you will take the experience from multiple exercises and turn your attention to the head in the mirror. The head we see every day is a meaningful, personal, and convenient subject for a painting. This segment takes a reductive approach to painting the head, seeking how little information is enough. Using paint, we will investigate whether translating the head into a few accurate shapes of color and value can create a truer likeness than a detailed description can. We will meet on Zoom and share work on the Padlet platform.
1 — 4:30 p.m. eastern time
Still life can be anything. Within this wide-open topic, we will focus on fundamental painting principles. Participants will build and light their own inventive and personal setups, and have a week between meetings to explore a series of exercises. Time lends depth to the painted image and frees us to pare down to the essential.
The exercises include:
• Mapping the relationships between objects and the rectangle, using a specific drawing method.
• Exploring different limited palettes to discover the nature of a few paint colors at a time, in terms of opacity, transparency, and relative tinting strength.
• Shape will be central to our approach. Reducing the motif to10-15 shapes will place the focus on color mixing and accurate value structure.
The emphasis will be on observation. Metaphor or personal meaning will come in the back door. Suggested medium: oil paint. We will meet on Zoom and share work on Padlet, an online platform.
THE HEAD EXAMINED at MassArt New England. In person on the Mass Art campus. July 20-26, 2025. This workshop takes a reductive approach to painting the head by seeking the essential. A series of exercises will invite you to break down, simplify, and abstract through observation of a model in a specific lighting condition. The exercises address the shifting nature of perception, beginning with an intuitive drawing method that leads to accuracy of proportion. Light and the way it affects the understanding of structure will be emphasized, along with the specific relationship of the head to the surrounding space. The objective is to reduce the head to the essential to create a truer likeness than a detailed description would. A study of historical and contemporary portraiture will be included. Some drawing and painting experience is recommended. Oil paint is the suggested medium; acrylic paint or gouache can be used.
THE HEAD EXAMINED: THEN AND NOW 2. THIS WORKSHOP IS FULL. April 2 - May 21, 2025. ONLINE AT Black Pond Studio. For the first half of the workshop, portraits from art history will be the point of departure for study of pictorial structure, with a focus on the head. We will touch upon the universal proportions of the head; a simple, intuitive drawing method will be introduced to help with drawing accuracy. Mediums will include graphite, charcoal, collage, gouache, acrylic and/or oil paint or materials you have on hand. Each participant will choose and examine one or two images from art history and generate permutations through exercises that lead to simplification and abstraction. This rigorous and wide-ranging analysis of images from our painting ancestors will feed our own work and imaginations as we engage with images that speak to us still. In the second half of the workshop, you will take the experience from multiple exercises and turn your attention to the head in the mirror. The head we see every day is a meaningful, personal, and convenient subject for a painting. This segment takes a reductive approach to painting the head, seeking how little information is enough. Using paint, we will investigate whether translating the head into a few accurate shapes of color and value can create a truer likeness than a detailed description can. We will meet on Zoom and share work on the Padlet platform.
THE HEAD EXAMINED: THEN AND NOW January 15 -March 12, 2025 THIS WORKSHOP IS FULL. at Black Pond Studio. For the first half of the workshop, portraits from art history will be the point of departure for study of pictorial structure, with a focus on the head. We will touch upon the universal proportions of the head; a simple, intuitive drawing method will be introduced to help with drawing accuracy. Mediums will include graphite, charcoal, collage, gouache, acrylic and/or oil paint or materials you have on hand. Each participant will choose and examine one or two images from art history and generate permutations through exercises that lead to simplification and abstraction. This rigorous and wide-ranging analysis of images from our painting ancestors will feed our own work and imaginations as we engage with images that speak to us still. In the second half of the workshop, you will take the experience from multiple exercises and turn your attention to the head in the mirror. The head we see every day is a meaningful, personal, and convenient subject for a painting. This segment takes a reductive approach to painting the head, seeking how little information is enough. Using paint, we will investigate whether translating the head into a few accurate shapes of color and value can create a truer likeness than a detailed description can. We will meet on Zoom and share work on the Padlet platform.
