
Venetian Style Figure Drawing & Painting
With Master Artist
Thomas Garner
8 Fridays | Jan. 19th - Mar. 8th, 10:00am - 1:00pm
Course Description
Week One - working with a live nude model, students will work in a Venetian style sketching and drawing the figure in sanguine and chalk on toned rag paper.
Week Two-Three - working from a photo of the model. Refine the drawing and proportions; define tonal areas and add high lights. Learn to stretch their linen canvas and how to gesso the surface. I will discuss oil paint material list and palette. Home Work before week Three: (See Below For Details)
1) Grid your drawing
2) stretch canvas
3) Gesso Canvas
4) Tone Canvas. Be sure canvas is dry before coming to class!
5) grid your canvas.
Week Four - working from photo. Transfer drawing to the canvas and start the underpainting.
-Painting with only burnt umber and white.
Week Five - the model returns. Reinforce darks and then start scumbling white to create a grisaille under painting. -Painting with only burnt umber, black and white.
Start applying color according to the Venetian system:
- glazing dark over light to create warm tones and then scumbling light over dark create cool tints.
- Painting full palette.
Week Six-Eight - continue with model. Do final atmospheric glazes and scumbles and some alla prima touches to give a sense of brio and liveliness. Finally a demo on how to apply bitumen at a later date when it is completely dry to give the painting a warm glow.
- Painting full palette.
A single pose will continue throughout the 8 weeks
What You'll Learn
A step by step approach to indirect painting through the three tiers: drawing, value, and color.
Create a drawing from a live model to discover the form and develop it into a finished painting.
Using a grid to make a more accurate drawing and how to transfer to canvas
The order of painting from glazing dark over light to scumbling light over dark.
Explore Classical closed form and Baroque chiaroscuro effect.
Personalized instruction

About
Thomas Garner
Thomas Garner studied at UCSD at a time when painting and drawing, in the traditional sense, were not even offered in the Visual Arts curriculum. His artistic foundation is built on Conceptual Art and semiology. Later Garner went to the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice where he learned to paint and found a strong nexus between craft and concept. "My painting style started out as photo-realistic, but with time I learned the craft of the masters so that now I am able to create a unified mechanism between technique and content, painting about painting. I strive to learn everything I can to about every aspect of figurative painting that has brought me explore live figure painting, plein air, still life and portraiture."