Workshops

The Art of Sketching/Journaling

The process of keeping a sketchbook and establishing an ongoing practice of sketching invokes creativity like nothing else and is essential to completing well-crafted and artful occasional works for your personal pleasure as well as full bodies of finished work for professional use. Sketching and drawing are the foundation to inspiring creativity and establishing any creative Visual Art process.

My task as your mentor is to show how and to encourage you to connect the gestures of your hand as it moves on your paper to your evermore-observant eye. To sketch and draw with ease, flair, and personal expression, one must follow time proven steps in a training process and I am able to take you through that process with relative ease, after 30 plus years of teaching it, and as a devoted practitioner. I love doing so and I love those who wish to learn this process that is so dear to my heart. You will find me to be an understanding person, engaging and encouraging.

Choosing me as your guide for learning how to sketch makes sense when it comes to considering my blend of knowledge, ability, thoughtfulness, and love for art and its practice. While taking my course, you will find that the thought and commitment you put into developing these timeless skills will equal the results you notice in your ability along the way. It’s infectious; as the more improvement becomes evident through your work the more enjoyment you’ll derive from the process.

The Art of Seeing

As an artist, I am constantly making mental notations of all scenes that pass before my eyes. I am always looking for both the essence of a place and the extraordinary in it. In a sense, I am taking streams of mental pictures that would put any touring shutterbug to the test. A very long time ago, I realized that a memory was far more powerful in the practice of visual expression than any snapshot can ever hope to be. The snapshot proves you were there, but the memory takes you there with a fully sensual remembrance and allows you to dream-walk around in it for forgotten or unnoticed details.

Later, when I trained professionally to become an artist I discovered the specific study and names of some observation skills I had gained naturally as well as other useful techniques, all of which are identifiable and capable of honing for active, aesthetically visual recall: the art of seeing. These pearls are in the understanding of the elements and principles of Design. Design, simply put, is the arrangement of visual experience, broken into identifiable parts, such as line, value, and form and a list of dynamic ways to gather those elements into striking and meaningful vignettes.

While mentoring with me during this course, my students will learn to describe, analyze, and interpret the world through design as an active visual process that helps to form an intensified observation and accessible notation. Sketching and journaling will be introduced as a natural extension of this process. Our course will explore expressive retrieval of stored imagery through the mixing and creative use of visual media and common art skills and tools. Our discussions will include the development of visual vocabulary, constructive critique, craftsmanship and original works.