ONLINE COURSES
In September 2014, I launched an 8-week online course on Floral Watercolours. Cost for the full course is $250; to audit the course costs $150. The next course is due to start in January 2018 and will be an audit-only course. The next course after that will be in September 2018.
The topics covered in the course are:
Working from Photographs; Composition; Colour; Values; Edges; Negative Painting; Textures and Special Effects; The Water Cycle and Critiquing your own work.
The materials I will supply at each lesson are:
1. A covering email
2. A link to a Dropbox folder which includes a file with one or more PDF handouts on the topic of the lesson, such as photographing flowers for painting; composition; values, etc.
3. A second Dropbox file which includes images of a painting of mine in various stages of progress, starting with the drawing on the first lesson and ending with the finished painting on the last lesson, and a commentary each week, explaining what I did at each stage. To make it easy to compare, the commentary and images are on the same page
4. A third Dropbox file including progressive images of the paintings of previous or current full students and a separate critique of each student's progress every week. For Lesson One I critique their reference photos
5. With 5 lessons, a link to a video on You Tube of me demonstrating a particular technique, such as negative painting, creating soft edges, or special effects. These are not professional videos but students from previous courses found them very helpful.
I propose to send each week’s material on a Wednesday and would like my full students to email me their work by noon on the following Monday, which will give me time to include a critique of each work with next Wednesday’s lesson. Students who audit would be receiving the material each week but would not be sending me work of their own to critique. I will create a group email (on a first name only basis for anonymity) where I will post and critique the work of the full students, but everyone will receive the entire critique of all the paintings in progress, so that I can discuss common issues collectively. I will use blind carbon copies so student’s email addresses will remain private. Only a small group of intermediate-advanced students will be selected for the full course; there is no experience necessary to audit the course, though some experience with watercolour would be preferable. Artists with very busy schedules might also feel more comfortable auditing the course as they won't be required to submit their own work each week and can advance at their own pace. Audit students also get to follow the critiques of the full students' work, as I think this can be a valuable learning experience. Before the individual critiques, I include a list of general points, dealing collectively with the most common issues the students have been facing each lesson. Most full students will work through one painting during the 8-week course, though some might want to start on a second.
Sometimes I will offer only an audit version of the course, in that case, I will use the work of some previous students and my commentaries on their work for the audit students to follow. The general points in the commentaries of each lesson provide an overview of the individual critiques.
I will keep a wait-list of interested students; contact me via the Contact page to add your name. The course is conducted in English. I have had students from Canada, USA, Europe (England, Scotland, Ireland, Belgium, Germany, Norway, Latvia and Russia), Australia, New Zealand, India, Pakistan, Myanmar, Saudi Arabia and Hong Kong. Please see the Testimonials page for some comments from students of the first course.
If you have been accepted and confirmed for a course, you can pay by PayPal. Select the appropriate course, the full course is $250 and audit course is $150. The audit version of the course is open to all students, but it is aimed more at intermediate students than absolute beginners. The full course participants are selected based on their experience and will be required to send me images of their work, as I can only handle a small number of full students each course. Some courses will be audit-only. Please do not pay until you have been accepted to a specific course. Just contact me and I will add you to my wait-list, and be in touch when organizing the next course.
Please DO NOT pay until confirmed by Marney.