6/30/2015 11:38:16 AM
There is no better place on earth to teach portrait and figure painting than Florence Italy. The city is rich with iconic paintings and sculptures for artists to study. It is where the Renaissance began and the great art from that period resides. Usually when I teach a workshop I bring along books or digital images to illustrate principles but in Florence students get to view, up close and personal, works from Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Raphael, Bernini, Del Sarto, Donatello, and so many more.
A tour of the Pitti Palace. The perfect place to study gesture by the masters.
Studying the limited pallet of Zorn David by Donatello
I based my lessons on all that I saw and learned from last year’s visit to Florence. The idea of the workshop was to simplify the figure into visual poetry, focusing on gesture, construction, and light while leaving off distracting details. We worked from short poses to longer poses as the week progressed. I am a strong believer in a good start. Without a good beginning of interesting shapes and simple value structure artists will spend all their time correcting. We began in charcoal then progressed through limited palettes to full color palettes with the longer poses. The studio was beautiful and we lit the models with cool and warm lights then used different palettes to express the light. It was a lot of work and a lot of information but the group of women who took the workshop were enthusiastic, knowledgeable, and an all round fun bunch. They had good questions and great attitudes and produced a lot of nice work during the five days. I thank each and every one of them for coming along on the adventure.
The students are blocking in a value structure of the model using a complementary color to the light.
6/29/2015 1:56:31 PM
I came back a week ago from an amazing trip to Italy and have been sorting through photos - trying to get my head around all that I saw and learned. I was there to teach a workshop called, The Figure in Florence. It was a nine-day experience and had students from all around the United States coming together in Florence, Italy to celebrate its art, culture, landscape, and food. I was lucky to be the instructor for this workshop, my job is to teach portrait and figure painting for five days, but the experience went far beyond the studio classroom. My friends, Debra and Ivano Zamperla, hosted the workshop and did an astonishing job of organizing the nine days. They set us up in a beautiful hotel, rented a wonderful studio and filled the rest of our time with private museum tours, special dinners, and fantastic side trips to nearby towns. They accomplish all of this with grace and good humor and make every participant feel welcome and comfortable.
City tour with Alexandra
I am going to accept that I am not a post-it-as-you-go kind of person. This is my second year teaching the workshop and this year and last year I swore that each night I would post all the exciting happenings on my blog and Facebook. When I am there, however, we are very busy and I admit that I would much rather roam the streets or have dinner with friends than try to connect to the internet. Time in Italy is not like time in the United States and dinner begins around 8:00 and can last for a few hours. I like that tradition and internet posting becomes low on my to-do list.
Dinner
View from dinner
Now that I am home and having fun reminiscing about the adventure, I would like to share it with you. My upcoming blogs will be about the workshop, the art of Florence, and other places we traveled after the workshop. Italy is a unique country and art is vital to their culture and economy. Italians appreciate beauty, good food, and good conversation, which is a welcome change to my work-focused lifestyle. Please follow along on my blog and join in the conversation. I’ll pour the wine…..
The whole gang, what a fun group!
