Sedona Arts Center — NEW Art workshops at Sedona Arts Center

Bill Cramer teaches various approaches to working on-site and how to efficiently compose and complete plein air paintings. Emphasis will be placed on how to effectively translate the often complex three dimensional landscape onto a two dimensional plane using thumbnail sketches, limited palettes and the thoughtful use of colors, values, shapes, edges and textures. Further emphasis will be placed on the creative process to make paintings that are more than strict representations of the landscape we see. Multiple demonstrations will be complemented by individual attention and group learning.

Jeff Perkins designed the workshop to improve your throwing and handbuilding skills and see things in a different way. Students will learn a series of techniques on how to throw distorted forms to make them more fluid and graceful. They will also learn how to create whimsical handbuilt figures using found textures to enhance them.

Pastel is a great sketching medium—its consistency of color and quick handling are valuable when working outdoors. The importance of simplifying the landscape and composing on location will be discussed and applied. Theme emphasis, values, colors, edges, emotional involvement, atmospheric and linear perspective will be discussed. All three days will be spent in the field where we can observe and study the outdoors first hand. This is the single most important method for improving landscape painting skills.

We will be creating three 10×10 pieces that will work together as a series. This series will be a body of mixed media artwork with common themes in US Mail ephemera backgrounds, vintage post marks, size and format, and bird imagery to re-enforce the travel and flight of letters.

Explore how to

• have an image emerge from the buildup of a variety of textures and materials
• create unique (one of a kind), multilayered prints
• combine traditional printmaking, drawing transfers and painterly imagery
• use relief processes to create monoprints

Come expand and explore your visual horizons and get tips for finding your own creative path to create a broad range of aesthetic possibilities.