I’ve been aloof with the blog posts. My apologies. I have a few longer posts in the works, and a few videos I’m working on. Here is the first one, the demo I normally do on my plein air painting courses showing how to glaze a dry landscape painting.
I’ll post the next ones as soon as I have enough free time to finish them.
I’ve put up information for my two 2015 plein air landscape painting workshops on my workshop page. One is in Europe and the other is in the US.
The first workshop of the year will be in Les Plans, Switzerland from the 9th to the 15th of June, 2015. The total fee for the course will be 1600chf and will include food, accommodation, six hours a day of painting lessons and panels for you to paint on. For the rest of the materials a list will be made available.
For further information or to book a place, please contact Alan Lawson at lawsonalan@gmail.com.
The next two workshops will be in the Greater Boston area (specific dog-friendly location still to be decided) from August 28 to the 30th.
These courses are being organized by Leo Mancini Hresko, so please contact him directly for further information or to book a spot: waltham.studios@gmail.com.
The last few years I was in Florence I taught landscape painting at the Florence Academy of Art. They have recently updated their website to reflect better their professional approach to teaching painting and sculpture.
Their alumni gallery is especially impressive for the sheer number of professional working realist painters and teachers they have produced in their short history, as well as the high quality of the art produced and the great variety of style in the works. ‘Academic’ art is sometimes criticized for producing painters and sculptors whose work all looks the same. Looking through the work displayed on the FAA site, the director Daniel Graves and his faculty have clearly done an excellent job of allowing individualism to flourish, while at the same time giving all their students the proper tools to realize their vision.
The Florence Academy’s drawing, painting and sculpture departments are all excellent and their écorché program (originally set-up by Andy Ameral who currently teaches at the Golden Gate Atelier in the SF Bay Area) is something I regret not having taken advantage of while I still lived in Florence. The FAA is also alone among the schools in Florence in having a number of gallery contacts, so the best students are funneled into the gallery system and avoid the tedious process of getting someone to show their work.
Here are a few photos from my week of teaching plein air landscape painting in the valley around Les Plans in Switzerland. I was working for the Alpine Atelier based in Gryon.
They are very unrepresentative photos as we only had a few hours of sun all week. Most of the time it was low clouds and snow. Nevertheless, the students managed to squeeze out a lot of great work.
It’s often the case that sparse subject matter produces better work while painting en plein air. In my experience, having too many wonderful views to choose from can be more paralyzing to the painter than struggling with difficult or meager subject matter.
Update: Here are a couple more off my phone.
I also shot a video of the 40 minute demo I gave on the first day of the course. You can view it below or on my youtube channel: