Riverbend Art Classes

Learn to paint!
Oil Painting with Jack Warden

Riverbend's artist-in-residence, Jack Warden will conduct an eight-week course in the fundamentals of oil painting. Classes will meet Saturday mornings (10am -noon). The course is open to anyone with a desire to paint and no previous experience with oils is required.

The main focus of the course will be on landscape painting, but the fundamentals covered will also apply to portraiture, still life, and other genres of painting. The main emphasis of the course will be on enjoyment and appreciation - you'll never visit a gallery or look at a painting again without a whole new way of seeing.

Register online with Parktakes Online, or call 703-222-4664 Monday through Friday, 9am to 4pm. The registration code is: 3572313102. Supply list will be mailed prior to first class.

The course will introduce the following topics:

• The materials of painting - paints, brushes, canvas, easels, etc. Before the first class, a supply list, including specific paint types, will be mailed to you
• Color and color mixing - warm and cool colors; a color myth that won't die; benefits of a limited palette; seeing color in nature; interpretive color; shadows and reflective light; color and tone value; a second color myth that won't die; the color wheel and color complements; indoor and outdoor color
• Three techniques of painting - the "Kevin MacPherson' color-block technique; the "Edgar Payne/Stanley Woodward" technique of red or blue tonal underpainting; the "Monet" technique of divided brush strokes.
• Composition - standard plans of composition; two mistakes to avoid; a compositional myth that won't die; composition's importance
• Tone-values - line, tone and color as bases of pictorial organization; establishing value-limits early; values in nature vs. pictorial values; values in shadows vs. values in light.
• Seeing the "ensemble" - the most important (and liberating and stimulating), least discussed concept in art. If you take away only one idea from this course, this is the one.