Summerclass at Palm Fine Arts

Palm Fine Arts is a decorative painting school run by two of the most talented decorative painters, Lotta Olsson and Mats Carlsson. I will post on their work . They have been very kindly invited to me in their summer program for 13 years (!!!).

Here is a presentation of the last class.

Two paintings in a week. This was the program for this years's class at Palm Fine Art.

The plan for the first panel was simply to gently warm up.

Student's work

student's work

I usually start the class with a technical lecture about the "art of painting" , as I see it after years of painting and teaching but this time I decided not to talk too much. Just paint, demonstrate and let people grab what they could instinctively.

Some students almost finished this first painting but most of them just painted the tree and that was  enough to have a good foretaste of the techniques we would use for the rest of the week.

As the students had no time to watch me finish my panel I have provided pictures with short notes like this one.

detail of my panel

The second panel...

... is based on a nice trompe l'oeil I created a few years ago for a show.

It is a very technical one with a lot of different textures ( foliages, grass, stone, textile, wood...etc.), some graphic difficulties ( leaves, chairs...) and a strong focus on contrasts.

That was very ambitious for 4 days and to my surprise most people completed the panel ( or almost). Sometimes the magic happens and even if this takes efforts ( 10 to 12 hours a day) and courage everything works smoothly and we all get the work done.

Here is the piece I painted for my students...