Here’s a special offer for members of Rocky Neck Art Colony: Let’s block print some holiday cards, together, apart.
Block Prints, by Mary Rhinelander
This year, whether socially distanced or locked down, keep pandemic panic at bay by joining artist Mary Rhinelander for three, one-hour get-togethers on Zoom.
Under Mary’s direction, we will design, carve and print. Mary will make her own card alongside us, available to answer questions and give advice. This is not a formal class, but rather a goodwill gesture to get us all organized and motivated to make an extra special card for our friends and family, many of whom we have been unable to see and spend time with. Plus, you can support the Post office by buying stamps!
Block Print, by Mary Rhinelander
Three get-togethers, one-hour each on December 2, 4 and 9. Cost for each is zip. Nil. Nada. Rien. Exclusive for Rocky Neck Art Colony Members. Happy Holidays, and let’s kick 2020 outta here!
Each online gathering starts at 10 AM.
You will need the following:
Blank cards and envelopes (smooth paper is easier to print)
Linoleum, sized accordingly
Carving tools and x-acto knife
A Sharpie
Ink (Mary recommends oil-based with soap and water clean up)
Putty knife
Brayer/roller
Plexiglass to roll ink on
Baren or wooden spoon
Rocky Neck and Mary will offer a follow-up in the New Year, so if you invest in these ingredients, you will have the opportunity to use them again.
Join us by sending an email to RNAC.Workshops@gmail.com. First 15 members to do so will receive confirmation and the Zoom link before the gathering begins. There will also be a link to Dick Blick for the suggested supplies, as well as a YouTube video of technique.
In a summer that wasn’t great for much else, the artists of Rocky Neck fought back with some terrific work at a bunch of plein air workshops. Here’s a sampling:
Ron Krouk’s Two Day Workshop on the Figure (Aug. 26 & 27)
Loren Doucette’s Poetic Landscape Class (Sept. 19)
Teacher Ron Krouk returns to round out the summer outdoors with a 5-hour painting class. If you took Ron’s first workshop, you’ll know we covered a lot of ground. This class will go over some of those basics and dive a little deeper. You don’t need to have taken the first workshop to be able to jump right in here.
We’ll begin with an intro/demo about using a viewfinder, doing thumbnails, transferring the thumbnail to the canvas and blocking in an underpainting in thin dark paint (Notan). We will paint for a couple hours then take a break for a bit to see what people are doing and give group feedback as requested.
Details:
Date: October 18 (rain date October 25), 10 to 4:30 (half-hour lunch break)
Location: On Cape Ann (address given to registrants)
Cost: $100 for RNAC members; $125 for non-RNAC members
In this one-day workshop, artist Loren Doucette will lead you in an exploration of landscape drawing and painting where freedom of color, line, brushstrokes and mark making is encouraged. We will focus on the connection between realism, abstraction and the imagination. Participants will work outdoors, socially distanced, in watercolor, pastel or acrylic. There will be a morning session, a short lunch break and an afternoon session to conclude the day.
Instructor is Loren Doucette, renowned Cape Ann artist, teacher and art mentor. She received a BFA in Drawing and Painting in 2013 from Montserrat College of Art, where she was the recipient of two scholarship awards from the college. See more of Loren’s work at lorendoucetteart.com
Details
Date: Saturday, September 19, 2020
Time: 10-3, 5 hours
Location: TBD, on Cape Ann, outdoors, with room for safe social distancing
Instructor Ron Krouk (www.RonKrouk.com) leads a two-day workshop on Zoom and in person.
Day 1 is class instruction over Zoom with a live model on video as well as photographic resources. Day 2 is live, a plein-air, socially distant painting segment building on the previous day’s instruction.
Participants will practice three time-honored approaches to improving figure drawing: gesture, contour and seeing with straight lines. These can be introduced and practiced separately. They are brought together by each of us in our own ways as we do the underlying drawing for a painting.
Practice will help you temper your instincts with accurate measurement and integrate your sense of the whole with your perception of details and relationships.
In looking at the group’s work together, we’ll enlarge our understanding of the exercises and open possibilities for seeing you may not have considered.
Details:
Day 1: 4-hour Zoom class, instruction with live model on video and photographic material
Day 2: 3-hour live class, with model (the group will be broken into a morning and an afternoon session of five people each to assure distancing). One-hour Zoom class at end of day to review everyone’s work together.
Dates: August 26 & 27
Day 1: 10-2 on Zoom
Day 2: 10-1 or 2-5 plein air on Cape Ann; wrap-up for 1 hour on Zoom at 6 pm.
Cost: $200 for RNAC members; $225 for non-RNAC members for both days, and includes some written material, photos and Zoom video from Day 1 and images from Day 2 wrap-up
Materials: Oils or acrylics (specific list to be sent later)
You don’t need to have taken the first Portraits class, but some drawing experience is helpful. This is a class aimed at all levels. Instructor Amy Sudarsky (juror of the Beyond Likeness portrait show, helps us look at the human head as a solid volume consisting of planes, light and shadow, and cross contour. We’ll see examples of Old and contemporary Masters in this context and, through group critiques, receive feedback on homework assignments.
The workshop consists of five, one-hour Zoom classes on Mondays and Thursdays, 10-11 (each session might run an extra half-hour, as questions and discussion demand). Each class is recorded and available to enrolled students for review or in case you have to miss a class or part of one.
Dates: July 27, July 30, August 3, August 6, August 10
In conjunction with Beyond Likeness , Rocky Neck Art Colony’s inaugural virtual art gallery, the show’s juror Amy Sudarsky is teaching a special online Portrait Drawing Workshop. In four one-hour sessions, she’ll cover subjects from a review of famous portraits to nailing likeness and expression. Classes are via Zoom from 10 to 11 AM on June 15, June 18, June 22 and June 25 (Mondays and Thursdays). Click the link below to register today! (To be clear: It’s only $100 for all four classes for members.)
And because these are delivered via Zoom, they’ll be recorded. Have to miss a class? No problem, watch the taped version at your leisure.
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.
Susan demonstrating
Susan explaining
Susan’s library
Susan demonstrating and her book collection
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!”
The stage is set (all surfaces covered).
Gelli printing—who knew the colors that can come off a square of, well, gelatin.
Our final pieces were as varied as we were. So much energy. So little time!
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?
Oh, and during our break, Jeff rearranged the set-up. Argh.We also got a (refresher) lesson on perspective. Some of us really needed it!
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.
The inaugural of the new Rocky Neck Art Colony Art Workshops.
Conducted by Tim Harney, Associate Professor at Montserrat College of Art, this two-day workshop focused on the figure. In Tim’s own words, “I can only conceive of the drawing workshop as a place where the emphasis is placed on ‘drawing to see…drawing to understand.’”
Tim wanted this to be an opportunity for us to hear how he approaches drawing from observation and the figure. He succeeded!
Tim Harney, conductor, and us.
How it’s done….
Samples (successful) of past Harney workshop student work.
How we wanted our work to look at the end of the day.
Maybe the most interesting time occurred the following Monday during our usual Monday afternoon Life Drawing at Rocky Neck— we got to compare notes and practice with one of Tim’s (and our) favorite models, Daniel.
RNAC Workshops 