FLUID FIGURES

ARE YOU TIRED OF FEELING SCARED ABOUT PAINTING THE BODY?  WOULD YOU LIKE TO LEARN A FREE, LOOSE APPROACH, THAT WILL GIVE YOU CONFIDENCE IN PAINTING FIGURES?

I truly love painting faces and figures and believe that they are the most wonderful way to express so much emotion. I also believe anyone can paint expressive figures.  However, many people are afraid to attempt the figure because of preconceived fears of the need for structure, measuring, anatomy, proportion, accuracy and realism.  In this class, I will show you a more freeing, loose approach to figure painting. This course is not about Photorealism or academic studies, rather an expressive, engaging, emotional and dare I say it..a FUN approach!

COURSE OBJECTIVES

By the end of this course students will have an understanding of the following concepts:

• Use gestural mark making and continuous line
• Paint with unconventional skin tones and bold colour combinations
• Discover how to find the shapes, planes and angles of the figure
• Combine painting and the drawn line, and not relying on outlines
• Explore hand studies, abstraction and distortion
• Learn the importance of negative space
• Understand lights and darks
• Build layers of colour, and create strong and unusual underpainting
• Create an emotional narrative
• Learn how figures interact
• Create a strong scale
• Work with texture

MORE ABOUT THIS COURSE

FLUID FIGURES is not a traditional or conventional approach to painting the body.  In this class, we learn to break free from that need for realism. We will embrace the imperfections and find our own interpretation of the figure. We will not spend hours studying anatomical references, measuring, studying foreshortening or perspective.  We will feel our way, use our senses, work intuitively and often very loosely to see where the paint wants to take us.

I work Big, Brushy, Loose and Painterly and I encourage all of these things.  Fill the paper, fill the canvas, fill the page! Find your confidence to express yourself fully.  Break the need for preciousness, it is not always about the finished piece. I encourage you to paint over old work, paint over previous exercises, just try again, and again, and again.