Five Day Pastel Workshop with Ron Monsma
Dates: June 16-20, 2008
Two Day Plein Air Landscape, Three Day Still Life
All skill levels accepted
>> Download the Registration Form (Available as an Adobe PDF document)
Ron Monsma is currently head of Drawing and Painting at Indiana University South Bend. He has been featured in a number of National and International publications including ‘The Pastel Journal’, ‘International Artist Magazine’ and ‘The Artist’s Magazine’. He was also included in the Chinese book on American Painting published by Jilian Press and most recently Northlight Book publications ‘Pure Color, The Best of Pastel’. Visit his web-site at www.ronmonsma.com .
This five day workshop will be a great enhancement to your pastel painting skills. As artists, we find that regardless of the subject matter we are often dealing with many of the same issues in our work-whether they are technical or esthetic issues. With this in mind, I have divided the workshop into two areas-one dealing with plein air landscape painting and the other with still life. This is an exciting approach which allows us, not only to concentrate on two genres of painting, but to see how understanding the relationship between the two enhances our work. However, students may choose to take one of the sessions instead of both. All instruction is geared toward each student’s individual ability and each student will find that regardless of their level of ability they can make dramatic improvement in the quality of their work.
Landscape
The two day landscape workshop session will focus on painting small plein air landscapes in pastel. We will learn to create these ‘little gems’ in one sitting – in a somewhat impressionistic manner and to record our immediate impression of the subject in a simplified manner.
A variety of issues will be covered:
Establishing a composition
Beginning a painting
Simplification
Color and value
Atmospheric effects
Painting convincing space
How to know when you are finished
Broad overview:
On the first day we will have an initial meet and greet and a discussion of materials. There will be a slide presentation of my landscape work and a demonstration on toning illustration board as an alternative to paper in preparation for painting. The morning will continue with a two hour demonstration on site. Students will then choose their spot for that day’s landscape painting. Instruction will be one on one and within the context of each student’s individual style-demonstrations will continue throughout the session.
The second day will begin with work on site in the morning. The workshop will then continue in the afternoon with a demonstration on ‘punching up’ your completed works in the studio and then finish with a discussion of everyone’s work.
Still Life
This three day portion of the workshop will focus on some general and specific approaches to working with Still Life in pastel. General, in that basic compositional issues subject to all two dimensional work will be addressed; and specific in our approach to creating form, textural effects and detail with pastel.
We will deal with techniques I use in creating certain effects in pastel. There has been interest in how I achieve the effect of brick and stone. This will be addressed as well as creating dramatic lighting effects. The still life we will do in this workshop can and may be simple, but you will be able to use this information in developing more complex compositions.
Issues to be covered:
Setting up your composition
Establishing your lighting
Getting started
Color composition
Getting the most out of darker values
Getting strong color
Simplification
Getting your pastels to do the work
Detail: when and where to use it
Knowing when to stop working
Overview:
On the first day of this section we will begin with a slide presentation and discuss setting up your composition for painting. I will demonstrate beginning a painting and we will work over the course of the three days to bring a high resolution to your work. One on one instruction will enable you to make the most out of your personal style of painting and demonstrations will continue throughout the sessions.