Current and Upcoming Online Classes
Appropriate for working in any 2-D medium (pencil, pastel, watercolor, acrylics, oil, etc.)
Create Striking Landscapes with Foreground Interrupters (Recording Available)
Mining Art History for Inspiration (Tuesdays, April 9 - April 30, 2024)
Artists deepen their repertoire of creative strategies through close looking at art historical precedents. Well-known artists’ approaches to color, composition, scale, rhythm, and process offer inspirations for our own creative endeavors in artistically exploring our daily world in new ways.
Half art history/art appreciation and half community share/art critique, this class is ideal for experienced art students and suitable for working in any 2-D medium. This course is also appropriate for professional artists interested in learning more art history and having some weekly structure. Our class has a full-time tech assistant who helps with all set-up, connectivity issues, and ongoing technical needs.
The first hour of each class is devoted to an art history PowerPoint presentation, from which I offer an art challenge for the week that provides many options for exploring the lessons based on your own interests, style, and experiences. During that week, I schedule optional one-on-one zoom check-ins to discuss your work in progress. The second hour of class is devoted to a community share of class work (via a PowerPoint of photos of student’s ongoing work) for encouragement, critique, and support.
Class goals are three-fold:
1. To expand artists' visual library of knowledge that will help (consciously and/or instinctively) in making decisions and choices in their own works when feeling stuck or otherwise.
2. To humanize some of these mythic artists. In better understanding their thinking, their decisions and processes, we can connect to them and their experiences as artists facing similar dilemmas and challenges in our own work and lives. This can be affirming and motivating as we struggle to create and grow as artists.
3. To stimulate, motivate, jump-start, excite our drive to paint, grow, experiment, explore, and move forward with our own painting by exploring and seeing a range of successful works in new ways.
The artists that motivate and inspire us are not always or only ones who paint in the style and manner that we do. Throughout history, artists grow and learn and assimilate ideas from past artists in moving forward with their own unique works and style.
My 4-week series is always focused on a potpourri of artists or themes--none repeated over time in the same way. Within the 4 weeks, my aim is to offer a mix of styles and subjects and personalities, representational and abstract, better known and less known. The images I show in one session might come back in other sessions in other contexts. Many class members have said they are often surprised by how absorbed and inspired they are by topics they would not have thought relevant or interesting to them at first glance.
Four-week class sessions meet 2 hours weekly. Ongoing. (Content is never repeated across sessions.)
For more information, email me at leighculverart@gmail.com
One-Time Classes (Groups of 15 or more)
For groups of 15 or more, I also offer one-time classes on a given topic or artist. These classes will first meet via Zoom for a 60-minute powerpoint presentation on the subject or artist, followed by a related painting challenge the group can then do on their own time. We reconvene a week later for a community share/critique.
For more information, email me at leighculverart@gmail.com
One-on-one Mentoring
I occasionally can offer one-on-one mentoring for the advanced beginner and intermediate watercolorist who is seeking direction, structure, and critique during this COVID time. I can make referrals to other instructors and classes as needed.
For more information, email me at leighculverart@gmail.com