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Floribunda

TWO SESSIONS AVAILABLE:

SESSION 1: JANUARY 20 – 22, 2024
Saturday - Monday, 9am-4pm each day
Or
SESSION 2: JANUARY 24 – 26, 2024
Wednesday - Friday, 9am-4pm each day
Session 2 Sold Out. Join Wait List

This 3-day course is all about making expressive, joyful paintings in response to looking at, smelling, touching, and reflecting on flowers.

By gathering colors and curating marks, you will compose, layer, select, edit, simplify and celebrate these glorious subjects through paint. Emily’s process offers the potential to make images that capture the life, light, delicacy, fragility, toughness, and poetry of flowers. She will demonstrate — and invite you to embrace — the ways she creates to describe the complex layers of foliage, textures, tangled stems, along with the froth, silk and abundance of the petals.

Emily will encourage you to make many paintings, to help you stay in the energy and flow of working. This practice of working in series allows you time to pause and really look at some of your work at the stage when it feels less finished or raw. You will be invited to revisit other paintings, in order to push them further. And Emily will share her process for evaluating and comparing her studies and works in progress.

The workshop includes:

  • Structured exercises

  • Demonstrations to help unpack the creative process

  • Strategies to foster an integrated approach to viewing sources of inspiration and responding to them in paint

  • Fun interactions with other participants

  • One-on-one instruction and support to help you develop work that is personal to you

  • Lots of opportunities for questions and feedback in a collaborative, supportive group environment

FEBRUARY 2023 FLORIBUNDA STUDENTS

What to Expect Each Day

Day 1

  • A morning of drawing - using touch as part of the information to inform the images.

  • Afternoon painting – experimenting with mark making to generate qualities that embody the flowers.

Day 2

  • Studies in paint to warm up and then continuing to explore making paintings for the rest of the day.

Day 3

  • Continue the series of paintings begun on the first 2 days.

  • One-on-one tuition and studies of the ongoing paintings.

  • Review the work and the 3 days in a rich group feedback process that will be video-recorded for you.

Mediums And Skill Levels

This course is suitable for:

  • Acrylic, Oils, or Mixed-Media artists

  • Beginners and Beyond (must have familiarity with the basics of working with paints, mediums, and brushes/tools.)

Pricing

  • Special pricing (through midnight, December 31, 2023): $675

  • Regular pricing (after December 31, 2023): $750

Your fee includes group and individual instruction from the instructor, facility usage (including easel and wall space and tables for your materials and supplies), flowers to use as references and inspiration, handouts, access to videos of feedback sessions, and hospitality (still and sparkling water, coffee and tea, and morning and afternoon snacks). You may either bring your own lunch or order from nearby restaurants and delivery services.

Please read Policies about Payment, Cancellations, and Refunds.


Session 2 Sold Out. Join Wait List

Materials List

We will provide easels, flower arrangements, and small tables for each student. You must bring:

  • Drawing materials:

    • Approximately 30 sheets copy paper

    • Approximately 15 sheets of 90-100lb drawing paper, 16” x 20”, 17” x 22” or 22” x 34” size

    • Charcoal (vine or willow and chunky compressed charcoal, recommended)

    • An eraser (white polymer or kneaded recommended)

    • Soft graphite pencils (3B - 9B would be suitable)

    • White and black chalk or soft pastels

  • Painting materials:

    • 9 surfaces (the same size/shape) to paint on – You may choose canvas, canvas boards, wood panels, heavy paper (such as Arches oil paper or 140lb watercolor paper), or other durable surfaces you like to work on.

    • Generous quantities of either oils or acrylics and the mediums they need (e.g., odor-free solvent and linseed stand oil for oils and retarder, gel medium, liquid matte or glossy medium, or pouring medium for acrylics). Recommended colors:

      • Cadmium lemon yellow, Cadmium yellow light, or Hansa yellow

      • Indian yellow

      • Cadmium yellow (medium)

      • Ultramarine blue or Cobalt blue

      • Phthalo blue (green shade)

      • Cerulean blue (optional)

      • Cadmium Red or Quinacridone Red

      • Quinacridone Rose (deep) (This color is very helpful with florals, but Emily recommends professional/artist grade and not student or studio grade)

      • Alizarin Crimson

      • Magenta (Quinacridone Magenta)

      • Titanium White (Emily recommends approximately 4-5 ounces of white)

Emily has provided a list of the colors and brands of both oils and acrylics that she uses. You DO NOT NEED to get the same products that she uses. But we wanted you to see her list in case it helps you make your selections. Download the PDF here.

  • Lots of different sized brushes and mark-making tools (we recommend that you have at least one extra large round brush, a rigger (long thin) brush, and long flat and round brushes of different sizes and textures)

  • Large palette (palette paper is fine) and plenty of plastic tubs to mix paint in  

  • Optional: A few oil bars/paint sticks (such as R&F Pigment Sticks) in colors that you are drawn to (NOTE: a Titanium/zinc White pigment stick is very helpful, if you can only invest in one)

  • Miscellaneous:

    • Lots of cotton rags and shop towels

    • A glue stick

    • Masking tape or Artist tape (low-tack)

    • Scissors