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Welcome to Try This! An exploration in painting styles and mediums: (this is an OLLI course) prepaid through Duke continuing studies. All participants supplies and materials are provide by me for $75 supply fee

Hi there and welcome to your journey in exploring a multitude of mediums, art terminology, theory and how they all work together to create amazing visual results. Below you will find our projected itinerary with suggested artist to familiarize yourself with to open up your creative tops. I do work intuitively, so if a project needs to go another direction or we need more time playing we will do exactly that. The emphasis is FUN and enjoying our time together and about the experience NOT the result. I am a Creative Coach, so if anything comes up along our journey and you need some one on one- please reach out! I love new ideas and exploring with people I'm connecting with, so please don't hesitate to probe my 27 years of self taught failures and successes to make that creative idea become reality! I look forward to our time together at the studio! 1:11 Art and Healing Space, 3409 University Dr.Durham. Åndria

Week 1: 1/30: Black & White terms " texture, balance, proportion"

This excercise is sure to broaden your Doodlebase, and whether it be a new way to focus on lectures, meditate or just start a family project for when friends, kids and family come to visit. Grab some things to trace and lets get started! This project lends itself to creating depth and planes in a piece with just the use of lines and patterns playing off each other. This is drawing, and pen and ink, it is created to help start opening up your minds eye and shift how you look at the world around you.

Supplies: pens, mixed media paper,ruler, pencil, eraser, and a variety of shapes (coins, lids, bowl, cookie cutters, library card etc.)

Artists to gain Inspiration from:
MC Escher, Vera Wang, Matisse, Miriam Schapiro, Lim MacConnel, Henri Matisse

Homework: take as much time as you want, just be sure to complete!
* this may be hard for the hands for long periods of time, break it down, do a little every day and let it lead you.

Week 2 2/6: Surreal collage "painting with paper"

How do we convey an emotion , concept, subconscious experience when we haven't the facility to draw or paint it into fruition? Collage and surrealism go hand in hand to help with creativity. By looking at objects, colors, scale and how they play off one another, we are able to create powerful messages and feelings with found images, words, and backdrops that quickly transmute us to another land. Feel free to bring pictures you might want to incorporate.
terms "scale, balance, color, focal point, warm, cool"
Salvador Dali, Magritte, Ernst, Chagal

Week 3 2/13 : Introduction to alcohol inks, water pen play, coffee drawing and painting

This week is all about fluidity, flow, and allowing your medium be your guide. Often in art, we don't know " when to stop". It takes many years of practice and understanding your relationship with the media you choose to work with. This weeks exploration will be working in paint forms where you must release control - to a degree and then how you let go of expectation and allow art to happen!

Week(s) 4/5 2/20&27: Buds o' Gold

Let's familiarize ourselves with brushes now and actually paint! I'll lead you through a couple of warm up excercises, cover mixing paint and strokes. With an understanding of proportion and scale, and how images play off of each other you will begin your first "decorative piece", so its organic nature lends to getting comfortable with the canvas, using space or choosing to let it rest.
This is a two week process, in the second week , we will learn about form, leaves, flowers and embellishment

Week 6: Oh Chicadee! Who doesnt love the luck and Green of March? This fun piece introduces an element of abstract art, meeting a palette knife, doing an in depth naturalistic painting of a bird, and then pulling in our gained design knowledge and painting with paper, as we continue to hone our skills with everything we have learned so far.

Week 7 3/13: What's in a word? We all love the art of card making, sending and receiving post. During this class I will take you on a journey of creating a variety of paper "stash" and recognizing that every little piece or scrap of art we have made along the way, lends itself to a mini masterpiece for gifting.

week 8/9 3/20&4/3: Basics of "the Landscape" (image subject to change) In our last two classes together, I will teach you the basic steps in landscape painting. This formula lends itself to being able to scope out and recreate almost any beautiful ocean scene, pasture, mountain, or field. Now that you have a knowledge of brush strokes, seeing how the relationships of scale and color work you can broaden your horizons and fly!