PAINTING WORKSHOPS by liza visagie

I offer both Studio Workshops and Plein-air (Outdoor) Workshops. All workshops are available to small groups. Intensive tutoring is also available to individuals. Please contact me for more information and rates.

 

PLEIN-AIR ATELIER – outdoor landscape courses

Revisit the Classical landscape tradition of Open-air Painting.

Plein-air painting requires a painter to render in shorthand the essence of a scene. It requires a set of skills of acute observation, simplification, technical mastery, maturity and intellect, to respond not just aesthetically but emotionally and to expand on our visual and felt understanding and experience of the natural world around us.

Often these works translate themselves into much larger studio works and are indispensable. It is an integral part of an artist oeuvre, image bank and practice and has a direct, if not, invaluable repercussion and influence on the larger scale studio works.

Learn paint techniques such as:

  • dry-brush
  • wet into wet
  • color mixing
  • measurements
  • composition
  • Capture the passing conditions of light and weather.
  • Exploration of local scenic vistas in and around Vancouver from Pastoral to Urban.
  • Visit Botanical gardens, marshlands, alley ways and forests.
  • Intensive weekend workshops.
  • Complete a painting within 3 hours.

All levels welcome. Intensive Small Group / Individual Instruction.

 

STUDIO PAINTING COURSES

Course Title: Working from Photographs in Oil
This course explores the many possibilities in which the found photographic image can be translated into the painted image.

Utilizing the photo as a tool and source of reference, and not as a mere copying device, the student will broaden their painting skills. This course offers the student the opportunity to select their own subject matter while applying traditional oil painting techniques. Transform the flatness of the photographic image through the tangible and flexible nature of oil paint.

Course Title: Painting the still-life.
Still-life painting is an excellent tool for learning how to reproduce the colors and values of nature. Learn the basic tenants of composition through setting up a still-life. Focus on balance, lighting techniques and finding the center of interest.

“Still-life paintings is simultaneously the most dependent and the most liberated of genres. On the one hand, it makes great technical demands on the painter in the imitation of surfaces, textures, and forms, while on the other, it is more nearly an independent creation than any other subject matter, since it is the artist who entirely controls four determinant factors: precise choice of subject, arrangement, angle of vision, and illumination.” – George Mauner.

Course Title: Painting the Self Portrait
The varieties of color, in painting the portrait, presents greater opportunities for learning about tone. Instead of merely observing features and shapes of your familiar face, learn to see the visual appearance of tone. Learn to utilize the site-size method of transferring shapes and angles. Learn the different stages of painting the portrait: from a linear lay-in to a dead coloring stage, towards a more accurate tonal application. Through the study of shape, tone and color you will achieve an accurate depiction of the self.

Painting Courses

Plein-air / Studio

Please contact me for more information.