Monday, September 19, 2011

 Art Class Demos from Sept 2011-June 2012

This post shows class demonstrations I gave at the Oregon Society of Artists. I teach a Tuesday morning Watercolor class from 10am-1 and a Wednesday evening Drawing and Painting class from 7pm-9. These are images from both classes and are not posted in order.

We are on summer break right now. 
Watercolor resumes Tuesday Sept 11, 10am-1 $20 drop in fee
Drawing and Painting resumes Wednesday Sept 12, 7pm-9pm $15 drop in fee

Contact me for more info at steve@stevekleier.com

 click on images to enlarge

This was the last demo for this season. It was done from a small sketch I made from the Washington side of the gorge east of Washougal. I changed a few things that  helped to capture the day.
We used these objects to practice capturing proportions and relative placement .


This picture was motivated by ideas about composition and color more than depicting a specific scene.


This shows a ruin of a Roman fountain in Vienna. The composition is pretty true to the photo but the colors are changed.

This was inspired by the same photo of Shoenbrun, but I used my imagination to radically change the viewpoint.

Since I changed the view so much in the painting above I needed to make a study in charcoal first.

This was done completely from imagination. Inspired, of course by the Oregon landscape. Just three colors. Burnt Sienna, Cerulean and Ultra blues.

A vacation photo from M Porter of southern Italy. It is a modified one point perspective and secondary triad. (green, purple, orange.

This shows a simple street scene in one point perspective and secondary triad.

This busy street scene was done from a photo and required quite a bit of simplification. One point perspective. The weak shadows and colors give it a cool feel.


Kingfisher done in watercolor

We did these bird drawings to capture proportions and shape.



One point perspective simple colors. Raw sienna, Cad red and yellow for the orange. Ultra blue and Alizarin for the violet. Cerulean in the sky.

Downtown Hillsboro

We showed the volume of these pots by rendering the shadow shapes.



This painting was from a photo I took at the rhododendron garden.

This is a copy of a painting by JZ.

This is a plein aire painting I did out at Marine drive. It wasn't a demonstration but I thought I would include it because we often talk about painting outside.


Here is a painting inspired by a photo but with a lot of interpretation. A simple two color pallet, Burnt Sienna and Ultra blue.

A couple more two color paintings. Prussian with Burnt Umber and Alizarin with Viridian.


These two drawings were done at the Wed night class. I used a photo with a grid to capture proportions and dark brown pencil and white conte on grey paper.


We used this painting by Trevor Chamberlain as an example of watercolor impressionism to copy. Here it is with the charcoal study.

Here is the finished watercolor.

This one is about the sky.

I cropped this photo to get the composition I wanted.

This one was done from a video.

We shook it up a bit with these cubist paintings colored with a secondary triad.


This was a lesson in using warm and cool colors in the shadows.


We used this image of the Dee River in Seaside for several lessons.



These demos from the last couple classes show two different ways to approach a painting. In the first painting there is a lot of useful information. The buildings and bridge give us plenty of shapes to grasp  and use for a composition. There is a lot of drawing on this one. The tree scene has very little drawing and relies almost entirely on texture and value/color to create the illusion of  groups of foliage, grass, distant trees and sky. 




This is the composition and value sketch for the above painting. The values are numbered 1-4. One is the lightest, four the darkest.

This is a contour drawing with graphite wash
Sanquine conte' with white chalk on blue paper

Thanks for bringing in the saddle Kris. It was a good subject. Charcoal and white chalk on craft paper.

This shows the hows of Free hand, Control hand  and the whats of contour and value
This is a contour drawing and a value drawing done with control hand

Oct 26. This is the demo.

This was done for the Wed night D&P class. It shows drawing in value. The proportions were rendered from a photo using a grid system.


Oct 25. I used a photo for this 1/2 sheet demo. But I changed it a lot to make it more satisfying for me.


This is a small color study. About 5x7"


Here is the composition/value study


This is the full color version.


Here is my painting from the set up. I use two colors. Raw Sienna for the color of light, ultra blue for the color of shadows.


Here is the photo of the still life we worked form this week

 Here is another one point perspective. This was done from a photo and required quite a bit of simplification to make it managable.

Sept 27. This painting shows one point perspective.



This flower painting was the final demo from last year




Using these three reference photos I created the painting below


The challenge here was to use three quite different reference photos in a composition. I used lines to do this as it makes the composition quite clear.


Demo from Sept 20