Painting Birds & Butterflies in Flight, December 20 & 30
 
In this two-day class, we will use vivid colors and brushwork to capture the essence of birds and butterflies in flight. We will go in-depth into the many applications of brushwork and palette-knifing to create texture, movement, crisp detail, and atmosphere. Painting movement and getting the sense of believable flight will be key.  
 
Other topics such as drawing, anatomy, value, color harmony, and composition (or how a butterfly sits in the composition as a whole) will be discussed. For this reason, it is recommended that you bring a still-life painting or portrait in to class that you are willing to work further on. If this is not a possibility, you may start a new painting from scratch. 
 
Teresa will be demonstrating her "sticker" method, in which she analyses paintings in her studio that are mid-way to being complete and adds compositionally helpful or narrative-driving flying objects to balance out her work.  By adding birds and butterflies in flight, she will demonstrate how greater movement and color balance can be created, even late in the game, for all paintings. This method will allow you to work in a "stream of conscious" manner, intuitively placing things from your imagination successfully into your works, as though you were a fiction writer fixing a plot, and not a slave to nature. 
 
Before the class meets, it is recommended that you begin collecting your own treasure trove of butterfly and bird in flight close-ups.  Reference photos will also be provided for you to use during the class.
 
The class will take place over two days, December 20 & December 30. By spreading the class dates out like this, students will have ample time to work on their pieces in between live instruction sessions.