Getting the Most Out of Workshops

One of my close painter friends does beautiful work and is represented in prestigious galleries, yet she has taken few if any classes or workshops. This is a very unusual and impressive achievement. Learning to paint well requires personal discipline, endless practice, ruthless experimentation, and the unusual ability to act as your own objective critic and mentor. Most of us cannot summon up the time, energy, or dedication to follow this difficult path. Most of us rely on classes and workshops to jump-start our journey and for refueling along the way.

Workshops provide an opportunity to study intensely with a painter whose work you admire and whose teaching skills, one hopes, are comparable. Unlike my friend, most serious painters have taken many workshops and may continue to do so even after they themselves are offering workshops of their own.

I attend perhaps one workshop a year, always with a painter whose work I truly admire. My goal is not simply to copy the instructor's style, but to become familiar with how they think and work in the hope that I can incorporate some of what they have learned into my own process. With this goal in mind, I abandon my usual way of working and follow the instructor's as closely as possible. After all, I don't need to fork out several hundred dollars to paint like myself; I can do that for free!

Study in Red and Green. I painted this still life during a workshop
with master still life painter Jeff Legg. It is painted in the
manner of Jeff Legg, though not so skillfully. My own
approach would be looser and less detailed, but I was there
to learn from Jeff, not to paint the same way I normally do

I use only the colors and other materials the instructor recommends. If he begins with a value sketch, I do a value sketch. If he prefers a palette knife to a brush, I use a palette knife. If he paints precisely, I paint precisely. My goal is to learn through imitation, and only later to incorporate what seems valuable into my own work.

Most workshops involve one or more demonstrations by the instructor. When I was a novice painter taking my first workshops, I didn't want to sit around watching the teacher paint; I wanted to paint myself. Only much later did I realize that demos were perhaps the most important part of a workshop because only there did you get to watch the "master" at work. By not paying attention, I deprived myself of valuable learning opportunities. When I started paying attention, workshops really began to pay off.

One problem for novice painters is not knowing enough even to know what to look for in a demo. I think that largely accounts for my lack of interest in the beginning. The most skillful instructors are aware of this and take pains to point out what you should be looking for at each step. These steps include choosing a subject, designing the composition, making preliminary drawings and value studies, selecting a color scheme, blocking in the painting, working with middle values, adding accents and highlights, and finishing a painting.

Some instructors approach a demo as if it they were painting in their studio. They offer little explanation as they work and do not welcome questions in the process. Without some guidance and permission to ask even the most obvious questions, the demo becomes a performance rather than a learning tool, entertaining perhaps but not particularly helpful.

The most useful workshops are focused and intense, like a good college class. The painters are serious about their craft and are there to learn. What I call "holiday workshops" (Paint in Tuscany with Steve!) are perhaps more fun but probably not as useful. But so what? Having fun is also important, especially since learning to paint is often so frustrating. A dedicated instructor will make sure that even her holiday workshops are valuable learning experiences.

Socializing with fellow participants is one of the most purely enjoyable parts of any workshop. Although most of you begin as strangers, you quickly settle into a relaxed camaraderie based on your shared passion for painting and your feeling that you are all in the foxhole together. Talking shop is not only fun but valuable. You can learn much from your peers and from watching how they approach their own work.

Among the goals I do not have for a workshop are the following:

• To create a finished painting. That might happen, but I don't count on it, and I am not disappointed if it doesn't. Your most successful workshop just might turn out to be one where everything you did seemed hopeless.
• To impress the teacher. This is a tough one because we all want to impress the teacher, but I try not to succumb to this temptation. It's not my job to impress the teacher; it's the teacher's job to impress me! I pay money to learn from a teacher, not to impress her.
• To see instant improvements in my work. That would be nice, but it's not the way most of us, at least, absorb new knowledge. Typically, weeks or months drag on before we successfully integrate what we have learned into our own work.

What I do expect are:

• An instructor who is well prepared and organized.
• Common courtesy and respect.
• Personal attention.
• Helpful demonstrations.
• Objective mentoring and critiques. 
• Specific recommendations for moving forward.