Oil Painting Workshop

On January 26, 2008 the WACG will be offering a one day Oil Painting Workshop with Jackie Stacharowski from 9am - 4pm. All supplies will be provided. The fee is $75 for WACG members and $100 for non-members (non-members may join the WACG to receive the reduced fee). The workshop will take place at the Santee Cooper Meeting Room at 1703 Oak Street, Myrtle Beach, SC 29577. If you are interested in attending or need more information contact Kate Lagaly at woogs1@yahoo.com or call 843-650-3750. If you are in town, Jackie will be offering a free demo at our regular WACG January meeting at the B&C Museum on Ocean Blvd at 10:15 am on 1/19,08. Since all supplies are provided this is a great chance for you to try something new. If you have never tried Oils before or just want to see how another artist approaches it, this is a good way to spend a Saturday. To see Jackie's work check out her web site www.artistjackie.com Wear old clothes or bring an apron. If you want to use an easel, bring a table top model with you, but you may also work flat on the table for this workshop.

Color Pencil Workship

Color Pencil Workshop with Kate Lagaly was held on 9/22. It was a great success. We all got to try our hand at this fun medium. Color pencils are an easy medium to work with. The only tools needed are the pencils, the paper or board, an image to work from and a sharpener and eraser or, as we learned from Kate, Stick-Tac. These supplies are easily portable, not messy and with practice, can give you wonderful results. If you have limited space to work, it is an ideal medium. Students had four images to choose from and got the supplies to work on all of them. We all started with the flower to get the basics down. Then I chose the elephant to play with. I spent another couple of hours working on him at home to finish him up. We had four colors of mat board to work with, plus one with a distinct texture. We also got to try adding color pencil to a watercolor base. Between watching Kate's demo's and doing our own work, it was a very interesting workshop. We all had fun and learned tons about this interesting medium.

WACG Sept Meeting

Today we had our Sept meeting of the Waccamaw Arts & Crafts Guild. Kate Lagaly gave a great demonstration of color pencils. She showed dozens of samples of her artwork and then worked on a drawing for us. She gave lots of tips and went over the tools she uses to create her art. She will be teaching a one day Color Pencil Workshop on 9/22 with all supplies included. I plan on attending and learning more about this fun medium.

Class Demo

It was fun to be in class again. I began a new painting as a demonstration in my Oil Painting class. It will be a live oak tree with Spanish moss. But like setting a table, creating a painting works best if you do the steps in the right order. To begin a table setting, one begins with a table cloth. To begin a painting, one begins with the background. This is especially true for landscape paintings - you start with what is farthermost away and work to what is 'closer' to you.

I used just three paints for this stage: ultramarine blue, titanium white and yellow ochre. I mixed the blue and white to get three shades of sky blue. The lightest value I painted as a band along the horizon, the next darker value in the middle of the sky, and the darkest value along the top third of the canvas. By making at least three values in your sky, you get a sense of depth in your landscape. Blend the bands together so there is a smooth transition through all of the blues.

I then added clouds. Do not paint clouds white! Use a lighter blue than any already in your sky. Also clouds in a painting look best if their bottoms are fairly straight and horizontal. Yeah, I know real clouds have all kinds of shapes, but giving them a flat bottom is what makes a better painting. Once you have the clouds shaped, you can now use some white and give them a highlight along the top edge. Soften them with by just tapping the side of your brush gently, and smoothing the highlight back into the body of the cloud. I usually make the clouds larger towards the side of the canvas and narrower towards the middle. This will lead the viewer's eyes into the painting. I made the clouds more intense on the left since I will be placing the tree on the right and covering most of the sky there.

Finally, I blocked in the ground with a mixture of ultramarine blue and yellow ochre, some yellow ochre along the horizon, a small blue puddle of water and streaks of the green mix. The ground has the darkest value at the bottom of the canvas and gets lighter towards the horizon. This will also add to the sense of depth in your landscape. I added some distant trees along the horizon. These are just dabs of the greenish gold making sure I left sky showing through. I usually make the these trees taller at each edge and shorter in the middle. That also adds to the sense of space.

I will begin the tree in next week's demo. Keep creating!

Class Schedule

Classes are held through the Myrtle Beach Recreation Dept at the Base Rec Center on the old Air Force Base.

Classes are held in six week sessions. However, you may come just when you can make it and pay per week if you would like. Session 1 starts Sept 11th.

Taught by Kate Lagaly:
Tuesdays 9 am til noon - Watercolor and Color Pencils

Taught by Jackie Stacharowski
Tuesdays 6 pm til 9 pm - Watercolor, Oils and Acrylics

Thursdays 9 am til noon - Oils and Acrylics

Thursdays 1 pm til 4 pm - Open Studio (any medium, less structure, just a join in and paint together)

Come join us if you can!

Preparing for Class

The past week has been busy with lots of little projects. Mostly I have been thinking about my classes and future workshop. For me there is a lot of thinking that goes into art. Whether I am creating a painting or teaching a class, I like to have a plan of sorts in place. It is usually not a firm step by step plan, more of a general guide to what I want to accomplish. To do this I have to have my goal in mind before I can figure out how to get there. So I need to know what supplies I will need, what reference material and then I can get going. For a painting I need my art supplies, an idea of what the painting is going to look like and I go for it. For a class, I need to decide what to take with me. I usually include a painting demonstration, so I need my supplies for that. I need to know what I am going to paint. I need to have an idea of what my students may need, I like to be able to help out if they have forgotten anything or if there is a tool I would like them to try out.

For both pursuits, I like to create atmosphere as well. When I paint inside, I like to have music in the background. Usually classical, light jazz or new age. Something that is livelier than elevator music, but not intrusive either. Something upbeat and it helps if it has a rhythm that encourages one to move their brushes! That needs to go along with me to class as well.

'Back to School' supplies shopping was always fun for me, so I usually treat myself to something new for each school years still. It celebrates a new beginning, a new challenge, a new adventure... Hope you will consider taking a class this year.

New Stuff on Web Site

Today I updated my web site with some new paintings. You can check them out at www.artistjackie.com/newstuff.html Some of the paintings are ones that I created during the Acrylic workshop in spring. It was a chance to play with new products and different techniques. This is a self portrait. Workshops are the ideal way to try something new since you have a guide to just what you need and how to use it.

Workshops

In the art world a workshop is an intense class where you can improve your skills, learn a new medium, try new tools, get a new instructor's take on things... They can last from a half a day up to a week. You can find them in your home town and all across the country and the world. They are a great way to spice up a vacation or they give you a good excuse to see another part of the country. It is always a good idea for artists to try something new, expand your horizons and have some fun while you are doing it.

The WACG is going to be offering workshops here in Myrtle Beach with ongoing regularity. We are going to try to offer at least three 1 day workshops each year and every other year offer a longer workshop. This past spring we had a 3 day acrylics workshop with Patti Brady. It was a great success.

On Sept 22 we will be offering a one day Color Pencil Workshop with Kate Lagaly, Signature Artist Member of the Colored Pencil Society of America, from 9am - 4pm. All supplies will be provided. The fee is $50 for WACG members and $75 for non-members (non-members may join the WACG to receive the reduced fee). The workshop will take place at the Santee Cooper Meeting Room at 1703 Oak Street, Myrtle Beach, SC 29577. If you are interested in attending or need more information contact Kate Lagaly at woogs1@yahoo.com or call 843-650-3750. If you are in town, Kate will be offering a free demo at our regular WACG
Sept meeting at the B&C Museum on Ocean Blvd at 10:15 am on 9/15.

Since all supplies are provided this is a great chance for you to try something new. With a small investment of time and money you get wonderful introduction to color pencils. They are a versatile medium that takes up little space and can be done easily in most settings.