Workshop in Philadelphia

Last week I had an incredible opportunity to attend a workshop in Philadelphia at Studio Incammanati. This is THE place to study painting these days in my opinion. It was founded by Nelson Shanks – he painted Princess Diana’s portrait as well as numerous other well-known portraits. He teaches how to see the right way – we learned about seeing the form of a person in planes and masses rather than lines and contours. We were taught how to construct a portrait with the proper foundation so we can build upon the most accurate structure as we paint the portrait. It was really fascinating and I want to go back and learn more. I attended a museum school of art and we were never taught these centuries old methods. I’d never done a color study before and wasn’t even sure what it was. Now that I’ve done one (two – but I failed at the first one), I can think back to the many portraits where I may have filled in a background or pillow or whatever over and over hoping to achieve just the right value, tone and hue. A color study would have been a great aid for that. I have a list of books to read that I’m planning to invest in. I’d read a few already but there were some great ones that I know will be very helpful.