Course overview:

This course will focus on painting techniques including glazing, scumbling and direct painting while working from still life arrangements then portrait and life models. Students will mix colors and set up a monochromatic, earth, limited, and expanded palette. Artists’ pigments, painting mediums, brushes and painting surface preparation will also be discussed. Demonstrations, individual assistance and group critiques are essential features of this course.

Attendance:

Attendance is critical. Classes involve working time and discussions that cannot be duplicated. Students are responsible for missed assignments and should make arrangements to contact the instructor or a fellow student to obtain this information before returning to class.

Homework:

I encourage you to work at home on similar concepts introduced in class. Those of you who are taking this as a credit course, homework is mandatory. Sketches, ideas and notes will be the primary use of your 9 x 12-spiral sketchbook. This sketchbook is mostly used outside of class, and for taking notes in class. The better your drawing skills the better your painting.

Grading:

Relevant to only credit course students. I take into account the students growth, work ethic, attendance, and ability to receive and use criticism. Assignments are very particular and the grade reflects your ability to meet the specifics of the assignment. I measure the student’s class work, homework, and sketchbook as evidence of development. The assignments will be collected on the due date and at the end of the semester. When assignments are returned, each student will receive a “grading sheet” explaining the grade. student / teacher meetings will continue throughout the semester so students understand their current progress.

A…90-100 Assignments…40%
B…80-89 homework…30%
C…70-79 Attendance, class participation…15%
D…60-69 Final Assignment…15%
F…59-or below

MATERIALS LIST

9” x 12” sketchbook (ringed binder)
Art pencil for sketch book, (2B)
Vine Charcoal: soft and thin
Small metal pencil sharpener.
Tackle box or Art box to hold materials.
Brush cleaner container: clear container with the metal coil works well
Basic Palette knife
Medium: Copal medium (brand name: Grumbacher) or Liquin are great mediums I highly suggest. These mediums are quick drying and easy to transport.
Artists tape (1 roll,1-inch wide)
Disposable Palette (purchase the larger size-11x14inches)
Old rags / towels to clean brushes (A MUST HAVE)

Paint: Purchase student grade paint:
-Titanium White, Large Tube
-Ivory Black, Small
-Raw Sienna, small
-Burnt Umber, small
-Ultramarine Blue, small
-Pthalo Blue, small
-Yellow Ochre, small
-Alizarin Crimson, small
-Viridian Green, small
-Cadmium Yellow Light, small
-Cadmium Red Medium, small

Brushes: Hogs hair, oil and/or acrylic brushes (long handles)
#12 Filbert Brush description page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brush
#12 Bright
#10 Bright
#8 Filbert
#6 Bright
#2 Bright
In the future you may purchase a MOP and a RIGGER brush.

Canvas: You can purchase canvas when needed
(4) 11 x 14”
(1) 18 x 24”
(2) 16 x 20”
Canvas paper: one pack of ten sheets, 11 X 14”

6 Week Schedule / Course Content, subject to change

Week 1: Introduction: discuss syllabus; material list; significance between drawing and painting. Demonstration how to hold a brush and mix paint; how to set a painting station.
• Demonstration and lecture relevant to paint application; value scale.
• Introduction and use of a viewfinder. Study the still life for areas that interest you, and make several thumbnail sketches in your sketchbook.
• Sketch and layout where objects are located within your painting surface
• Begin painting from arranged still life; work from general to specific.
• Reduce and simplify objects into form, shape, and space.
• Measuring, sighting, and perspective (MSP).
• Sighting for relative proportions, sighting for angles in relation to verticals and horizontals, sighting for plumb lines or alignments between landmarks.
• Significance for establishing a point of reference or unit of measure.
• Introduction of terms such as and, volume, edges, mass, and how planes and geometry construct an object.

Week 2 Composition and its relevance form, shape, and space.
- Lecture: Renaissance geometric composition relationship to non-objective Russian Constructivists.
- Discuss relationships of value placement, horizontals, verticals, and diagonals to support compositional intentions.
- Introduce Chiaroscuro: Italian word meaning light too dark; using high contrast to model a form.
- Speed drills: 30-second paintings up to 30-minute paintings. Read and react with instinct and speed. Artist presentation: 5-10 minute presentation to the class of a painter (your choice).
- Introduction to warm and cool colors.

Week 3: Work on warm and cool color paintings.
- Introduction to color theory: Mix opposite colors to achieve a perfect gray. Munsell Chart
- Pointillism paintings: How colors react to each other. Slide show: George Seurat, Van Gogh, etc. Begin painting color paper still life.

Week 4: Continue to work paintings.
- Introduction of glazing and scumbling techniques.
- Work on large surface, full palette, still life painting.

Week 5: Slide lecture of historical, modern, and contemporary painters relevant to portrait painting.
- Reduce palette to earth tones
- Portrait Painting from model full session
- Critique

Week 6: Slide lecture of historical, modern, and contemporary painters’ relevant to full figure painting.
- Paint full figure in interior space.
- Final critique.

14 Week schedule / Course content, (syllabus is subject to change)

Week 1: Discuss Syllabus, material list, and the relationships between drawing and painting. Begin pencil sketch of a composition using basic drawing fundamentals: MSP (Measuring, Sighting, and Perspective). Mandatory: Purchase Materials for the following class. View Finder: fabricate at home (3 x 4 or 2 x 3.25”).

Week 2: Demonstration: how to hold and use a brush, mix paint, and organize a painting station. Develop a value scale using black and white. Lecture reviewing basic composition and drawing fundamentals. Begin to paint from still-life using the 10-step gray scale. Instructor will demonstrate. Homework: Styrophome Cup Project: http://jaimetreadwell.com/DCCC-Painting-Styrophome-cup-project-description.htm

Week 3: Slide show: geometric composition from the renaissance period through and up to modern art. Continue gray scale paintings concentrating on composition, drawing, and paint application. Apply structure, form, and volume with brush strokes and value. Introduce warm and cool colors. Light produces a warm-orange-like-hue in contrast to the cool blue shadows.

Week 4: Color theory. Explore three main characteristics of color: Hue, Value, and Intensity. Discover how to mix paint using complementary colors (view color wheel) and a limited palette: Ivory black, Titanium White, Burnt Sienna, Yellow Ochre, and Ultramarine Blue. Extract multiple hues from a limited palette. Use a hue-finder made from white paper and a hole-puncher. Practice mixing accurate color. Note: this palette is lacking intense color; as a result, your mixing will not yield intense hues, but will yield subtle variations of low intensity hues. This limited palette will strengthen your ability to see subtle transitions of hue, value, and intensity within shapes of forms. Start second painting, focus on composition and drawing. Homework: http://jaimetreadwell.com/Dccc-painting-warm-cool-geometric-forms.htm

Week 5: Review color theory (organization of color). Practice mixing perfect grays using complementary (opposite) colors. Experiment with making blue-grays, yellow grays, red grays, etc. Start with a gray and push it toward a color. Develop an awareness of subtle variations of hue within shapes of forms. Continue second painting and focus on general to specific color relationships. Work in masses, large to small. Homework: Cardboard Box Project: http://jaimetreadwell.com/Dccc-painting-cardboard-box-muted-primary-palette-description.htm

Week 6: Add intense hues to your palette: Cadmium Red and Cadmium Yellow. Notice how the high intensity colors can help to push and pull forms Notice how colored grays (desaturated color) can be used to intensify richer hues (color relativity). Homework: Simultaneous Contrast Project

Week 7: Full palette paintings: Experiment with colors that are close to perfect complements. Those will be your instant grays. Take note on the variety of grays you can mix, and use those combinations as you develop your color mixing skills.

Week 8: Speed Drills: Work on spontaneity and immediacy. Explore brush work and gestural mark-making. We will complete a series of six 5-20 minute paintings. This method will increase your sensitivity to mark making, and develop your self confidence by risk taking. No hesitation (over thinking), just apply the paint. You will learn in the process.
14 Week Schedule Con’t

Week 9: Manipulating the medium: glazing and scumbling. Using transparent colors: Viridian Green, Alizarin Crimson, Burnt Sienna, Raw Umber, etc, experiment with glazing techniques. Experiment with mixing layers of dry transparent colors and/or apply a layer of transparent color to intensifying a color on your painting. Experiment with blending and scumbling on top of a wet glaze. Instructor will demonstrate in class. Homework: Finish Full palette painting.

Week 10 Introduction to the portrait (cast hall). This week we will meet in the cast hall. Palette: Burnt Sienna and white. We will concentrate solely on drawing the planes within the head and paint application in terms of value/volume. Concentrate on Structure, structure, structure…Homework: Self Portrait Project: http://jaimetreadwell.com/PAFA-painting-portrait-description.htm Continue this project until the last day of class for peer review.

Week 11, 12: Introduction to the portrait (live model). Practice drawing the planes of the head. Palette: Ivory Black, Titanium White, Burnt Sienna, Yellow Ochre. This is also known as the “dead palette”, or “earth-tone palette”. Lecture with visuals referencing historical, modern, and contemporary examples of portrait painting: Begin painting from live model.

Week 13: Full-figure painting (live model). Palette: Burnt Sienna and Titanium white. Focus on structure, planes, and volume.

Week 14: Finish full figure painting (live model). Palette, dead palette: Ivory Black, Titanium White, Burnt Sienna, and Yellow Ochre. Final critique/ peer review on figure and self-portrait paintings.

ART STORE LIST: Local stores:

Merion Art & Repro Center Pearl Paint
17 West Lancaster 417 South Street
Avenue. Ardmore, PA 9003 Philadelphia, PA 19147
61 0-896-61 61 215 238-1900

Rubinstein's Utrecht Art Supply
250 East Market Street 301 South Broad Street
West Chester, PA 9380 Philadelphia, PA 19107
6 10 696- 1150 215 546-5600

Village Art Shop Utrecht Art Supply
23 E. State Street 2020 Chestnut Street
Media, PA 9063 Philadelphia, PA 19103
6 10 566-6242 215 563 5600

AC Moore Michaels
Broomall Plaza 601 West Baltimore Pike
2940 Springfield Rd Springfield, PA 19064
Broomall, PA 9008 610 690-1633
6 10 353- 1117
Also available is the PAFA store located on 6th floor for your convenience. Remember to present your ID for possible discounts at all stores.

Axioms, do not abide by these all the time…just a reference.
In any layer:

* Paint from warm to cool.
* Paint from thin to thick.
* Paint from lean to fat.
* Paint from dark to light.
* Paint from loose to tight.
* Paint from big to small.
* Use the largest brushes possible.
* Avoid using white as long as possible. Make as many midtones as possible without white.
* Paint light not objects as long as possible.
* Use as few colors as possible.
* Remember that any daylight scene has one color of light and one opposite color in all the shadows.
* After a certain point, removing paint can be more effective than adding it. After another certain point, removing paint becomes your only option.
* Cover the surface evenly, don't let a problem area distract you.
* In a given layer, don't do the same thing twice: make sure to vary the color as you develop it.
* Your agenda for the painting may not be where it wants to go. Allowing it to succeed on its own terms might be more interesting.

Painting Vocabulary:

Achromatic: Literally, without color. In art, a composition in shades of black, white, or gray.
Additive: Colors made by light, the additive primaries are red, green, and yellow
After-image: The illusion of a visual complementary color image that occurs after staring at a hue, then shifting the gaze to a plain white surface.
Analogous hues: Colors that lie next to each other on the color wheel.
Attributes of Color: The three main description or properties of colors, namely, hue, value, and intensity.
Balanced Color: Colors that are balanced by their complements and carried across theory values and intensities.
Binocular Vision: Two retinal images, one from each eye, melded by the brain’s visual system into a single image that appears three-dimensional.
Chroma: The degree of purity or brilliance of a color.
Chromaticity: A term interchangeable with chroma, saturation, and intensity.
Color constancy: The psychological tendency to see colors we expect to see even when the actual colors are different.
Color harmony: The pleasing result of balanced color relationships.
Color scheme: A set of colors chosen to combine within a composition.
Color wheel: A two-dimensional circular arrangement of colors that reveals color relationships of spectral hues.
Complement, complementary: Colors that lie opposite each other on the color wheel. Placing them side enhances the brilliance of both;
Composition: The arrangement of shapes, spaces, lights, darks, and colors within the format of an artwork.
Cool colors: Colors that connote the coolness of water, dusk and vegetation: usually violets, blues, and greens.
Crosshatching: A method of shading by using short parallel lines, often in superimposed sets of lines crossed at various angles to darken an area.
Double complementary: A color combination of four hues: two sets of complements such as red/green and blue/violet/yellow-orange.
Dyad: A color scheme based on two colors
Glaze: A transparent film of color painted over another color.
Grisaille: A method of painting that uses shades of gray in an underpainting to establish the value structure of a composition.
Hue: The name of a color.
Intensity: The brightness or dullness of a color; also called chroma, chromaticity, and saturation.
Line: A narrow mark that defines the edges of spaces and shapes in a composition. Line can also be used for shading, as in crosshatching.
L-mode: The language mode of the brain usually located in the brain’s left hemisphere and characterized as a verbal, analytic, and sequential mode of thought.
Local color: The actual color seen on objects or persons.
Luminosity: In painting, the illusion of radiance or glow.
Monochromatic: In painting, a work based on variations of one color
Monocular vision: By closing or covering one eye, the brain receives a single image, which appears to be flat like a photograph.
Negative spaces: In art, the shapes that surround the objects; sometimes considered background shapes.
Palette: A surface for holding pigments and providing space for mixing paints.
Perceptual color: The actual colors of objects and persons.
Pictorial color: The adjustments to perceptual color needed to bring a color composition into unity balance, and harmony.
Pigment: Dry color ground to a fine powder and mixed with a liquid for use as a painting medium.
Primary colors: Colors that cannot be mixed from any other colors—for example, red, yellow, and blue.
Reflected color: Color reflected from one surface to another.
R-mode: The visual mode of the brain usually located in the brain’s right hemisphere and characterized as a visual, perceptual, and global mode of thought.
Saturation: A term signifying the brightness or dullness of a color: used interchangeably with intensity, chroma, and chromaticity.
Secondary Colors: Colors that are mixtures of two primaries—for example, mixing yellow and red (the oretically) makes orange.
Shade, shading: In Ostwald’s model, color changes made by adding black, thus decreasing the proportion of the original color.
Simultaneous contrast: The effect of one color on an adjacent color.
Spectrum, spectral hues: The sequence of colors seen in a rainbow or in the colors created by passing light through a prism.
Style: An artist’s personal, usually recognizable, manner of working with images and art materials.
Subtractive color: Pigments and pigment mixtures used in painting that absorb all wavelengths except those of the color or colors apparent to the eye.
Successive contrast: Interchangeable with after-image.
Tertiary colors: Colors made by mixing a primary and its adjacent secondary—for example, the tertiary yellow-orange results from mixing the primary yellow and the secondary orange.
Tetrad: A color scheme based on four hues equidistant on the color wheel—for example, green, yellow-orange, red, and blue-violet.
Tint: A light value of the color
Toned ground: A thin wash of a neutral color on a surface to prepare it for painting.
Triad: A color scheme based on three colors equally spaced from each other on the color wheel—for example, yellow, red, and blue.
Underpainting: A preliminary toning of the surface to be painted, often somewhat more detailed than a toned ground.
Unity: The ruling principle of art and design, which all parts of an artwork contribute to the harmonious unity of the whole.
Value: The degree of lightness or darkness of a color.
Warm colors: Colors associated with heat or fire, such as red, orange, and yellow.

Drawing Vocabulary

Contour Line: A line that represents the shared edges of a form, a group of forms, or forms and spaces.
Line weight: Varying line thickness achieved from applied pressure to the drawing tool.
Linear perspective: A Mathematical system for creating the illusion of space and distance on a flat surface
One point perspective: Uses one perspective point; all parallel lines converge to one point. That point is called the vanishing point.
Two point perspective: Uses two perspective points or vanishing points. In two point perspective the sides of the object vanish to one of the two vanishing points on the horizon line. Vertical lines in the object have no perspective applied to them.
Three point perspective: All lines go to a vanishing point. Two vanishing points on the horizon line; one above or below.
Atmospheric perspective: Using value to create the illusion of depth and space. As objects recede into space their value becomes lighter.
Vanishing Point: Is where all parallel lines (convergence lines) that run towards the horizon line appear to come together like train tracks in the distance.
Eye level: In perspective drawing, a horizontal line on which lines above and below it in the horizontal plane appear to converge.
Horizon line: Runs across the canvas at the eye level of the viewer. The horizon line is where the sky appears to meet the ground.
Convergence lines: “Visual rays” helping the viewer’s eye to connect points around the edges of the canvas to the vanishing point (also known as orthogonal lines).
Value: In art, the darkness or lightness of tones or colors. White is the lightest, or highest, value; black is the darkest, or lowest, value.
Composition: An ordered relationship among parts or elements of a work of art. The arrangement of forms and spaces: (the design of the page).
Medium: Material used by the artist. e.g. Charcoal, graphite, conte crayon, oil paint, welded metal, terra cotta, etc. These are all different mediums.
Gesture drawing: A quick simple translation of an organic shape; usually associated with the human figure.
Texture: The visual or tactile surface characteristics and appearance of something.
Mass: Refers to the effect and degree of bulk, density, and weight of….
Volume: Space within a space.
Negative space: Empty space.
Positive space: Opposite of negative space; filled with something. Both spaces have equal importance.
Figure / ground relationship: The depth ambiguity between the positive and negative shapes / space.

Shape: An enclosed space defined and determined by other information. e.g. A donut has two shapes.
Edge: The place where two things meet (e.g. where the sky meets the ground); the line of separation between two shapes or a space and a shape.
Picture Plane: An Imaginary construct of a transparent plane, like a framed window, which always remains parallel to the vertical plane of the artist’s face. The artist draws on paper what he or she sees beyond the plane as though the view were flattened on the plane.
Crosshatching: A series of intersecting sets of parallel lines used to indicate value change or volume in a drawing.
Symmetry: Equal balance on both sides. The parts of an image or object organized so that one side duplicates, or mirrors, the other.
Asymmetry: Opposite of Symmetry. Both sides do not mirror each other.
Balance: Equal distribution of elements on both sides of a drawing.
Rendering: To represent in a drawing or painting, especially in perspective. Also, to create an interpretation of another artist’s work.
Sighting: Also known as “Rule of thumb”, Measuring relative sizes by means of a constant measure ( the pencil held at arm’s length is the most usual measuring device); determining relative points in a drawing—the location of one part relative to some other part. Also, determining angles relative to the constant’s vertical and horizontal.
Foreshortening: A way to portray forms on a two-dimensional surface so that they appear to project from or recede behind a flat surface; a means of creating the illusion of spatial depth in figures or forms.
Chiaroscuro: Italian (light and shade or dark) High contrast; the use of light and dark to achieve a heightened illusion of depth. Can be used to heighten drama or feeling as used in the theater.
Figurative: Describes artwork representing the form of a human, an animal, or a thing;
Abstraction: Imagery which departs from representational accuracy, to a variable range of possible degrees; to exaggerate or simplify surrounding forms. Picasso / Braque