Notes from a Workshop!

This past semester, we were lucky to have a very popular artist, Vincent Desiderio come and speak at our school and do a few workshops. I attended the lecture which was very insightful, but what I found to be even more informative was the information that I was able to glean from attending one of the workshops.

My experience in this workshop was a lot like this blog post by Joshua Flint, as well as this one by Mike Manley.

Some of Vincent's work:

I sat in and listened for a while and watched the students as he directed them. In the first workshop he had them draw a quick gesture of a model on paper and then shellac over it. This session they were starting to figure paint in oils. He would demonstrate how colors were affected by each other and the differences between warm and cool ones. I’m very new to oil painting, so I tried to follow along as best as I could and write some quick notes:

1. Have on your palette warm versions of cool colors and the other way around. There are warm and cool reds, greens and blacks.

2. Understand how broken color works. Take yellow and purple. When you put them together it makes them less garish. Different reds are broken with different kinds of greens. Burnt umber mixed with white can look like another color next to yellow.

3. Let shadow model the form.

4. Always buy good quality paint! One of the students that he was helping had bought some very cheap paint. It may have been Winton, I don’t really remember…but he immediately told her to get better paint in front of the whole class. I’m sure she was a little embarrassed that day. As I’ve started to paint, I really recognize the difference between the cheap paint and the good stuff after my painting is dry. It’s better to spend the extra money, and oils go far and last a long time. He also told everyone to not be afraid to harm their brushes and “scumble” with them. Some students expressed concern about them not being cheap but he didn’t really seem to think they were that expensive.

5. When direct painting, use a full range of color.

6. Use chromatic opposition. Remember contrast.

7. He seemed to like the “fruit salad” idea, although I’ve read that it’s not a good thing. I guess everyone is different.

8. Let color create an organic shape and modify the edges.

9. Your paint should be bone dry. If you must thin, use turp.

10. Become like a sculptor, lay the paint on.

11. Work something until an illusion comes into place. Then once you find it, you can move forward.

12. Light is the tool for creating roundness.

13. Use the other end of the brush to scratch with or use a harder bristle.

14. If you want to create something, you must try to do it with your own technique. But you must keep your principles behind it. Then, you will be a part of history. (This piece of advice was my favorite )

15. Shadows are mirrors! Not only will shadows be cool, but remember that there is a cast shadow color.