Illustration Academy

This summer I taught as one of 5 full-time instructors at the 7 week Illustration Academy program held at Ringling School of Art in Sarasota, Florida. It was an amazing group of artists and students that came together this year, and a privilege to be working with the other full-time faculty John English, George Pratt, Sterling Hundley and Brent Watkinson. In addition to the five faculty, a different guest instructor was invited each week to give an assignment, media demonstrations, and critique the students on their process. The guests were some of the most successful illustrators working today: Mark English, Gary Kelley, Anita Kunz, Chris Payne, John Foster, Natalie Ascencios, Scott Anderson, and Robin Eley. It was such a pleasure to work closely with this group of students and follow their tremendous progress. We awarded Charlie Griak with best of show, and most improved to Dave Rutheford (send me your link, Dave). Take a look at the academy link to see more student work and the incredible program they offer. I attended the program myself 13 years ago and I believe it is the best and most intensive illustration program out there.
Here are just a few action shots above (clockwise from top left: Mark English gives a demo and lays in the tar, Chris Payne on caracature, Gary Kelley pulls a monotype, Justin Runfola and Dustin d'Arnault flash the secret sign, and bottom left is George Pratt's paint box his and beautiful wet-into wet oil demo.

I also gave a very classical oil painting demo. The process is shown here below. It is a way of working that lets you hang on to your drawing when you are learning to paint. First, do a graphite drawing and spray it with workable fixative so it doesn't disappear when the oils hit it. Then lay down a transparent wash of burnt sienna and burnt umber, wiping away light shapes with a rag and building up darks with more umber, so that you establish a monochrome value structure before going in with color. The drawing can still be seen at this point, so if it's not going well you can wipe it all out and start over and your drawing will still be there. Once you've built up the lights and darks you can slowly bring local color into the paintings and build up the opacity of the paint. Working this way at the beginning can really help you get a grasp of the medium and makes you sensitive to subtle color and value relationships. The second painting was done the same way, but with brighter color and thicker paint.