I teach a specific class for Rachel Keebler at Cobalt Studios in New York once a year. Over the course of three and a half days, I lecture on historic scene painting, train students in handling dry pigment, and explain painting techniques while students complete several dry pigment projects.
The class goes far beyond replicating a few historic compositions, with me offering suggestions along the way for a successful completion. We look in depth at color characteristics, value placement, compositional layout and brush stroke. In each case the individual projects are tailored to each student, regardless of their skill level. I hate having an entire class replicate the exact same piece, and try to give each student as much power as possible to make it their own, or do a variation on a theme. We all move in the same direction so that students can reference each other as we progress. Gray-scale images in addition to an original color source help when students opt for alternative color schemes.
For this particular class, none of the students had ever mixed dry pigment and size water (diluted hide glue) together for scenic art. In itself, this is a challenge. The wet dry pigment colors on the palette may not even remotely resemble their dry version is on the canvas. Also, many of the colors contain a high dye content and can bleed through or interact poorly with other colors. Part of each class is to complete a color wheel, exploring the various color interactions, reinforcing what we discuss.
This year we started the class with painting two water compositions. By the end of the first day, we had explored glazing, opaque washes, and the necessary value contrast to suggest water movement.
The second day, we looked at painting techniques for glass and metal, painting two contrasting projects.
The third day we completed a shield that integrated all of the painting techniques explored in the previous two days.
Our final half-day was a time for completion, reflection, looking at other brush strokes required for other compositions and clean up. In other qwords, if a student finished early by day four, I asked, “What do you want to learn now?” In some cases it may be foliage or draperies.
This was a really good group of personalities. After a full day of painting and group meals, many students returned to the studio to work on their projects. It says a lot about the enthusiasm of the students. Overall, it was a delightful experience and I can’t wait to return next year.
