watercolor

egg tempera

encaustic mixed media

acrylic on paper

drawing with computer color added

A workshop by Jon Rader Jarvis

This is a high content 5-hour workshop. Each class member will participate in the discussion of steps to vastly improve their painting techniques and materials. They will understand painting materials and techniques and receive a handout with enough information to fill a book. The workshop handout will be a fully packed reference work with sources, bibliography and links.

Chapter Contents:

Grounds:
      gesso, oil, acrylic, gold leaf, flake white
           (Crementz or lead white), and tinted grounds
Dry pigment:
      sources, precautions
Making paint:
      oil, acrylic watercolor, egg tempera,.
The Medium:
      choosing the base.
Drawing materials:
      vine charcoal and compressed, oil crayons,
             watercolor crayons.
Varnishes:
      Oil, Acrylic, Wax,

COURSE GOALS AND LEARNING OBJECTIVES: The student will acquire advanced skills to evaluate painting in most available media. The student will acquire advanced skills in making or using the materials and techniques of painting. Painting is a learned skill. This class offers a practical curriculum rather than a design curriculum (where evaluative skills are more important than acquired expressive skills.)

CLASS CONTENTS: Projects for this class require additional time to prepare media and painting surfaces. Each painting media demonstration will explore part of the materials and techniques and goals of painting, historically and explore the practical ways to use them. There will be class demonstrations on the practical aspects of materials creation and their effects on the finished work. Class discussion is encouraged.

Introduction
Materials and Techniques is a logical starting point for learning to paint or draw. If this curriculum was designed after the apprentice programs of the middle ages or the Renaissance, this single class would last for a year. Learning the basics of the materials and how to use them -- these are the necessary skills for any artist. Since we don't as a rule make our own paint or prepare our own canvas, that would seem to be an anachronistic throwback to an earlier irrelevant day. However, people who makes choices from ignorance have only themselves to blame when something goes wrong. If it goes wrong ‘enough’, a reputation is damaged or destroyed, and in art we live by our reputations. If you would paint, you need this information.

We study foundation materials and what goes together to make the everyday things we use to make art. Paint recipes will be included and we will practice the simple process of making or enhancing our own materials. Although time consuming, these educational tools will show you how to improve the materials you use, the intensity of the colors you choose for your palette and the longevity of those materials. This class will provide a recipe book and bibliography that you will use for your entire career in art.

We begin with old media and forms, and progress to the present day use. Then we will try to predict what the future will bring.

The class will learn about acquisition and handling of art materials, and the materials selected will last a considerable length of time. At a time when art materials cost so much, this is not a little thing.

STUDENT REQUIREMENTS: Bring note making materials and questions. The greater the class participation, the greater the material covered and depth of content.