Week 8 mid-term and Vincent Desiderio Workshop

This last week was mid-term at PAFA. I only had one crit, and that was in Renee's class but we learned to stretch canvas in Materials & Techniques class and drew a live horse in Animal Drawing--but the best was the two-day workshop given by Vincent Desiderio. Once again Vince came down and gave a two-day intensive workshop for about 30 students, a mix of undergrads like myself as well as MFA students.

I took his workshop last spring and it was one of the best experiences I had at the academy, and this one was just the cherry on top of that. Vince transfers not only his mastery of techniques to you but his energy, philosophy--(a lot of that) and his passion as an artist. In short, he's sort of like a dynamo that charges you up!
Like my other favorite teacher Scott Noel, Vincent gets you going from all sides.Above and below you can see my painting in progress.



Above: Vincent gets ready to do the demo. Alina likes what she sees...

The workshop was broken into two days, the first we would get the drawing done and shellacked and then try and get as much done as possible on the painting, finishing it on the second day. Like last time in the workshop we did a block-in drawing in ink first, and some of the students did their drawing in charcoal, which looking back on it I should have done. The ink is more difficult to work with and starts building the paper right away where the charcoal won't. So next time I will do this with charcoal first. next we shellacked the drawings and then Vincent gave us a demo using one of the students drawings to do his demo with. he loaded in the light masses of the figure, succumbing on the titanium white along with a little burnt umber, yellow ochre and a little black.


The group was split into two rooms and Vincent walked in and out and gave everyone crits as they worked, for a few he would stop and paint on their drawings to demo what he was talking about and to make sure you got what he was talking about. It's a mixture of observational drawing and painting along with some ala prima. You are trying to draw what you see but also invent or push the concepts, the form in light, turning away from the light, slow or fast.



I also got to have Vincent give me a private crit on my work which I took in. He liked my paintings and said the were very good but that I could activate the surface more, bring more texture into parts of the painting. So I will try that on the next big painting. it was a great weekend that seemed to go really fast and while I got to know Vincent a bit better and my admiration grew for him as an artist I think I grew to like him even more as a person.