Art Classes Offered by Rich

Below is a list of current offerings for art instruction. Unless otherwise noted, all classes are held in my studio, B4. Please contact me if you are interested in signing up. Additionally, if these times or days don’t work for you, contact me and lets see if we can work on other times. HIGHSCHOOLERS AND HOMESCHOOLERS: I am also working on schedules with some new students now. Contact me if you are interested in knowing more about getting involved in additional classes not listed below.

Oil Painting
(Uninstructed, ongoing) Tuesdays 3-6pm

Fees
$225 for 5-week session.
For an additional $25 per 5-week session, all painting materials can be supplied.

Drawing Class
(10 weeks beginning January 19, 2012)
Wednesdays 5:30-8:30p or, Thursdays 6-9p

The way we see the world shapes our world-view and how we approach life and our relationships. The ability to “see” is one of the most important aspects of creating a drawing. Developing the art of observation will be the principal aspect of this class. We will be learning to gaze at a subject, discovering relationships between shapes, looking for subtle shifts in light and shadow, composition, perspective and many other tools for creating an accurate rendering of any subject. With graphite in hand, we will be working on class projects, and will also be asked to follow-up each week in your sketch journal.

Fees
$300 for 10-week course.
$45 materials fee (Drawing pad, pencil set, kneaded eraser, text book)

Figure Workshops
(Uninstructed, ongoing) Thursdays 7-10p in Studio A4

Join us on Tuesday nights to draw or paint. We will usually begin with gesture warm-up poses for the first 25 minutes, then 25-minute long poses for remainder of night. Every 3 or 4 weeks, we do a single long pose all night. We start at precisely 7:01 so get there beforehand to set-up and do a meet-n-greet and get a cup of something to drink. Nude models. Drawing horses, drawing boards tables and chairs are provided. If you want to use an easel, bring one.

$15 if you drop-in. $60 for 5-workshop pass

My studio is located at

Studio Channel Islands Art Center
2222 Ventura Blvd, B4
Camarillo, CA 93012

Figure Painting

Tonight I begin again. Camarillo Figure Artists is the new group I will be hosting. It is a group of artists gathered to find our way through the evening while drawing or painting a figure with some snacks and perhaps a glass of wine in hand. In many ways this is my favorite thing to do — gather with people to create. The energy of a group like this is very organic, spiritual and are connected with each other with the subject before us.  I was in Dave Gallup’s figure group last night when I painted the above painting of Toni. He said that his approach to figure painting is similar to doing a landscape painting. If you paint simply what you see, the colors, shapes, relationships between them, your painting will represent the figure that is modeling for you. There is little need to fully understand anatomy. I will mull that over for a while, but I like the approach. So, tonight I have 16 people signed up and about 6 others that have told me they expect to come. I better get an extra couple bottles of wine

Studio Walls and Figures

I have three partners that will be sharing my new studio. Dennis Peterson, Gretel Compton and Nobel (Ace) Powell. Dennis and I spent the better part of yesterday building the frames for our new walls and adding the skins to them. These walls will help add a great bit of wall space in order to show the work of each of the artists. Although the windows are fantastic, they take up all that wall space. Tomorrow, painting and installation.

Announcing: Camarillo Figure Artists. Starting in mid-September, I will be hosting uninstructed life-drawing and painting workshops on Thursday evenings from 7 to 10 pm at 2222 Ventura Blvd, Classroom A4. Most nights will begin one session of 2-minute poses, followed with twenty-five minute poses for the remainder of the evening. Once a month will be a long pose, so you can get a good chunk of time to paint or sculpt the model. We will have a mix of nude and costumed models and the details will always be posted in advance for each workshop. If you’re from around these parts and would like to join us, sign up to the mailing list at http://www.meetup.com/Camarillo-Figure-Artists

Speak to us of Clothes

Painting by Kehil Gibran

Kahlil Gibran. He was born in Lebanon, was a poet, philosopher, and artist. His poetry has been translated into more than twenty languages and his drawings and paintings have been exhibited in the great capitals of the world. He lived in the United States, which he made his home during the last twenty years of his life. Since painting my nude self-portrait Threshold for all to see, I have had the opportunity to think about and discuss clothing… or the lack thereof. Kahlil Gibran wrote many things in is book “The Prophet” and this one struck me as interesting as I read it this week. I have bolded the most interesting phrases to me…

The weaver said, “Speak to us of Clothes.”

And he answered:

Your clothes conceal much of your beauty, yet they hide not the unbeautiful.

And though you seek in garments the freedom of privacy you may find in them a harness and a chain.

Would that you could meet the sun and the wind with more of your skin and less of your raiment,

For the breath of life is in the sunlight and the hand of life is in the wind.

Some of you say, “It is the north wind who has woven the clothes to wear.”

But shame was his loom, and the softening of the sinews was his thread.

And when his work was done he laughed in the forest.

Forget not that modesty is for a shield against the eye of the unclean.

And when the unclean shall be no more, what were modesty but a fetter and a fouling of the mind?

And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.

On Beauty

We should never mistake glamor for beauty. All that glitters is not gold. Some of the most beautiful moments in life can be the most difficult to look at. Think of the messiness of birth… the broken water, the blood, the crying, the after-birth, but all is forgotten once the newborn baby is in your arms. As tears well up in your eyes and you see the face of your child first time, you have looked at a matchless beauty that is both very present and one that comes from eternity. I believe that Beauty is very much tied into the notion that when we see Beauty, we see the face of God for a few fleeting moments. If you can look into the eyes of a drunk on the side of the road with this in mind, you may be able to see beyond the skin and into his soul… into eternity. There is a deeper connection that we have with all of humanity that present within all of us. Jesus asked us to see him in those who are least amongst us. We are to look at people and even some situations, not how they are, but how they could be.

I am always on the lookout for the Beautiful. I can sometimes be very distracted by it as well – It might be a simple brushstroke on a fine Monet painting, or the indention of fingers into the nude form of a woman on a marble Bernini sculpture, or even the simple swaying of 30 foot long strands of ivy along the wall of the freeway, moving with the wind of passing traffic – until the traffic suddenly stalls in front of me, and I smash into the BMW that has stopped in traffic Luckily for me, the dark, thick amber liquid I could see pouring down her windshield was not blood from her head as I feared, it was her caramel latte. I thought of sending her a $20 Starbucks card, but decided it would be in best to leave it alone and let the insurance companies work out the details.

Beauty can be found in the oddest places. If you have seen the movie American Beauty, you may remember the scene where the girl-next-door is warming up to the voyeuristic tendencies of the boy neighbor-next-door. As they are looking at each other through second-floor bedroom windows, she begins to remove her shirt, as he films her on his hand-held video camera. As she proceeds to take of her bra, the viewer can see what he sees in the viewfinder of the camera… a close-up of her face. He was much more interested in the subtle nuances of her face, and her welcoming smile as she disrobed for him, than getting a shot of her boobs, which is what she (and I) was expecting.

What are YOUR thoughts? leave a comment below.