painting women and light

I have two students to thank for inspiring Your Artistic Style, formerly called Journey Toward Personal Artistic Style.

The first had taken four of my workshops and weekly classes, virtually back to back. When she didn’t sign up for the next one, I began to wonder if something was wrong, so I gave her a call.

“Nick, I’m getting really good at painting in your style,” I remember her saying. “Now I have to figure out what mine is.”

The second inspirational shoe was a student who asked me to teach her how to paint in the Impressionist style. That had me stumped. Manet, Monet, Degas, Cezanne, Renoir – they were all Impressionists, but their styles were all different. What they shared was not so much style, but a philosophy about art. 

Which led me to realize that while there are a whole lot of art classes on how to paint, very few focus on why to paint, or for that matter, what to paint. So I set out to design something that could help painters along their journey – and be fun at the same time.

I started with the premise that other artists’ influences are important as we develop our own style. And one way to help students accelerate the process would be to throw a lot of historical art at them, have them pick out the elements that drew them to various paintings, and then work with them as they incorporated those elements into their next painting.

The plan was to collect images of a wide variety of paintings through history (including a few of my own, although I’m not history – yet!). After an introductory discussion, I’d have the students go through the images – 485 of them, by the time I’d finished several weeks of research.

From my Through Artists’ Eyes class, I knew that group support was a powerful tool. So I set the students up around computers in groups of four or five, and had them go through as many images as it took – usually about two-thirds of the 485. When one student identified a work they loved (or hated), his or her group was to probe. What is it that affects you so deeply here? The genre? The colours? The contrast? The subject matter? Or something else entirely?

At the end of this process, each student emerged with a list. Some had decided they wanted to paint an entirely different subject; others in a different style. Others found colours they hadn’t tried, or a level of contrast they’d yet to explore.

Their next job was to find an image that could support a painting incorporating all the elements on their list. I provided feedback. And then the painting began.

Unlike my other classes, I did not insist on the students using a particular brush, or a very limited palette from which they would mix their own colours. That would have defeated the purpose – although it works well in one of my other classes, Passion for the Figure, to help students try something new and free up their approach.

What I did insist on for this class was that they stick to their list. So, for example, if someone had identified high contrast as an important element, but was reverting to their customary midtones, it was my job to point that out, and encourage them to go for more extremes of dark and light. 

At the end of my first three-day course, I had 14 tired students with 14 wonderful paintings.

Your Artistic Style