Art Workshop: Art Hacks with Betsy Jacks
Have you thought about creating a painting that you would love, but it was too daunting? Or maybe you tried and the results were disappointing? In this hands-on workshop, Betsy demonstrates how to bypass the frustrating parts of making representational art, such as getting the underlying drawing the way you want it. She will demonstrate how to use simple methods she has developed to guarantee a successful drawing, making the process easy and fun.
This workshop is suitable for painters at all levels, including Beginners.
Participants will start with a blank sheet of heavy paper that is suitable for painting later and will learn how to set it up for success, including: how to transfer the basic sketch of either a landscape or a figure onto the page, how to make it look “realistic” right away by getting the darkest darks into the composition, and how to choose the most important and dominant colors to paint later.
Techniques Betsy will demonstrate:
1) The carbon paper method: get the outlines of your desired image onto the painting surface and eliminate the struggle to get the proportions, shapes and sizes “right”.
2) The projector method: hang your paper or canvas on a wall, project and enlarge your desired image, and then simply trace what you see.
3) The darkest darks method: use a free app on your phone to convert your image to pure black and pure white with no grays. Transfer the black shapes onto your painting surface, and your image will already look great.
4) The Fairfield Porter method: simplify to start! Choose just two colors for each object or element, one light and one dark, which gets you 90% there.
You’ll come away with one completed mini painting (made with paint pens) and one small painting with the under-drawing finished, all ready to paint at home later.
All the necessary tools & materials will be provided.
Note: to protect the workshop space, we will use paint pens rather than liquid paints for this workshop, but once you learn the methods, any art materials can be used.
About Betsy Jacks
Betsy has a passion to empower people to make art that they love, stemming from her belief that everyone has creativity inside them that can and should be expressed. She is a visual artist who has exhibited recently at the Spencertown Academy, as well as widely in numerous Hudson Valley and New York City exhibits. She is a former director of the Thomas Cole National Historic Site in Catskill, New York.
Betsy paints in acrylics and oils on canvas, but her techniques can be applied to virtually any medium.