Master class | Exploring Colour and Gesture in Painting with Ashley Frost

Overview

This series of three masterclass workshops is positioned to be experienced as individual modular workshops or together as three workshops, with a connected multidisciplinary approach to expanding one's creative vocabulary. You can choose to book the workshops as individual masterclasses or as a carefully combined group of three workshops.

Students will gain skills in understanding composition, tonal design and colour harmony through research drawing practice. This practical approach to research drawing and colour studies will enable students to discover gestural elements and colour nuances in landscape painting.

For a comprehensive overview of this workshop please download the PDF here

What to expect: Exploring Colour and Gesture in Paint

This workshop will focus on a major work in the form of painting on board or canvas. The workshop will start with a series of drawing exercises to find structure and your dynamic composition. This is followed by a series of preparatory ink studies that enable spontaneity and direct mark making to find gesture in the landscape. We will then move onto pallet work and colour mixing exploring colour theory. We will discuss restricted palettes from master painters such as Elisabeth Cummings and seek to apply some of these to our main work. Expect to start your painting like never before and to expand your sense of colour, line and form. Students will gain knowledge in developing their composition through using thumbnail line sketched and thumbnail tonal design sketches. Students will also develop skills using inks and apply these skills to develop both gestural and tonal studies. All this acquired knowledge will be ultised to create a major work in the form of a painting on board or canvas.

Is this course right for me?

This is a master class for experienced painters and assumes prior painting experience.

Materials

For the painting on canvas or board workshop:

Image Resources
First you will need an image of a subject to work from. This approach is ideal for subjects with less detail and broader planes of colour. Anything of interest such as landscape, still life, interior, portrait or abstraction. It is recommended to bring along a selection of images in the form of photographs and/or drawings which can be evaluated and discussed to find the most suitable composition. Remember you can bring the images on your phone or ipad and then print in colour the ones you need at Art Est as a4 or A3 (for a small fee).

Art Materials: Support
Depending on your medium you can choose from a variety of supports. These include painting paper, canvas boards, stretch canvases, or painting boards. You can look at a group of smaller canvases or boards that you can look at developing a series or Also bring your sketchbook for notes and support drawings.

Art Materials: Painting
You will need your paints, palette, brushes, medium and painting rags. For watercolour and gouache you don’t need medium as the paint effectively dries onto the plate; for acrylics you will need some Matisse Open Medium or any slow drying medium so the paint doesn't dry on the palette and for oils you will need odorless solvent such as Gamsol and a painting medium such as Stand Linseed oil. For colours I suggest two variations of Yellow, Red and Blue along with
white and a burnt or raw umber to mix a coloured black.

About studio classes

Our class sizes are small, ensuring you receive the individual tuition you need. We have a maximum of 12 students per class.

Unless otherwise noted, prices *exclude* art materials. Click here to see a list of local art supply retailers.

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