Light and shadow are vital elements in image-making. Shadows define objects and create mood. Make an image in which SHADOW is the most important element.
Simple rules:
Send your images to RNACworkshops@gmail.com. Deadline May 9(ish).
Uh-oh—I left my house without my sketchbook! Arg! Luckily, I found a paper bag (or a stone or an apple…). For this challenge, draw on a non-traditional object or surface.
Rules are simple:
One-week deadline: You have until May 3, so get drawing! Send your images to RNAC.workshops@gmail.com.
Apparently the virus has triggered a surge in sales of jigsaw puzzles and other games. For this Art Challenge, play a game (video, vintage, card, word) and then draw it.
Rules are simple:
Two-week deadline for this one; you have until April 25. Send your images to RNAC.workshops@gmail.com .
Keep a sketchbook and bag of pencils in your car (which you should always do anyway). Stop to draw without leaving the car. Bring a snack, try to park so sun streams into the car, choose some good music, and go for it! Deadline in one week: April 11.
Send your images to RNAC.workshops@gmail.com. Rules are:
Make an image of a chair from your house, perhaps the chair you would offer to a visitor. Let’s visit each other virtually!
Send your images to RNAC.workshops@gmail.com.
This isn’t a drawing — but it’s drawn from Thoreau. In Walden, in the chapter Winter Visitors, he writes:
There too, as everywhere, I sometimes expected the Visitor who never comes. The Vishnu Purana says, “The householder is to remain at eventide in his courtyard as long as it takes to milk a cow, or longer if he pleases, to await the arrival of a guest.” I often performed this duty of hospitality, waited long enough to milk a whole herd of cows, but did not see the man approaching from the town.
From RNAC member Karl Frank
Here’s where we’ll be posting submissions to the first Challenge: Seeing Outside the Box. Your assignment, should you choose to accept: Make an image that includes one or more eyes (your cat, a potato, a hurricane…).
This Challenge is closed. But there are new ones here. Don’t feel like playing but want to get your work out there? Get on the Rocky Neck Facebook or Instagram pages. Just send your name, the image, title of the work, medium and a sentence or two about the work to: Rnac.operationsmanager@gmail.com
We’re going to cancel — more accurately, postpone— the Susan Ellis Pastels Workshop. If you signed up for this, you will be getting a refund check. You will also be the first to know when we reschedule this.
We’ll hold off on scheduling more workshops for the time being. (Although there may be something virtual abrewing….)
Breaks my heart, but I’d rather be proud we did our bit to help stop the Coronavirus and can get back to our regularly scheduled lives!
How’s your handwriting? Gotten a little illegible since the Great Keyboard Takeover?
To the rescue: The ancient art of calligraphy. It’s at once harder and simpler than it looks.
Our guide for the one-day workshop on February 25 was Newburyport-based artist and author Susan Gaylord.
Susan is a kind and patient teacher. She gave each of us a blunt-tip Kuretake calligraphy pen, told us how to hold it and let us loose — on a series of straight lines. Then slanted straight lines. Then, when we felt especially emboldened, we made crossed lines!
It was getting a bit wild, but tackling our first letter “n” brought a hush of concentration to the room. Remember trying to learn to write? It was a lot like Miss Moron (yes, her real name, poor woman) standing over me in second grade all over again.
Too bad we only had one day, but we packed a lot in. We got all the way to “d” (with stops for “a”s and “o”s along the way). It sounds hectic, but was anything but. It’s a very meditative practice, and takes simple repetition to get it in the right direction.
Susan was kind enough to bring a sample of her calligraphy books for us to look at. There’s a lot to learn here. We’ll be back for more.
Formula for fun: Take 1 (one) Happy-go-lucky teacher + a whole array of tools and playthings = two very delightful days.
This late January (25th and 26th) workshop proved that artists can be surrounded by messy things and still not make a mess. Artist-teacher Maria Malatesta guided us through mixed media, collage, applying paint and building surface. Hard to not hit something with a materials list that included wood panels, fabric photographs, wallpaper, old letters, maps, oil sticks, sewing materials, old books, and “any other materials that…grab your attention!”
Gelli printing—who knew the colors that can come off a square of, well, gelatin.
On January 16 and 17, we let Jeff Marshall take over the upstairs gallery— and us— for a whirlwind, two-day adventure in drawing.
Okay, should have been a little nervous when Jeff brought in pallets, plastic crates, assorted boxes and bins and sawhorses. Yes, we were going to draw that. Oh, and an old tire. Did I mention the red plastic gas can?
Look at all that work we accomplished! Jeff’s feedback was specific and very considered. He met each of us on our own terms with encouragement and suggestions.
RNAC Workshops 