Karen Rosasco

www.KarenRosasco.com
Experimental Watermedia and Collage

May 6 - 12, 2012

Medium: Watermedia
Level: All Levels
5-Day Studio Class

Karen Rosasco has been teaching art and design to high school students and adults for 40 years, leads painting trips to Europe and exhibits award winning abstract paintings in shows and galleries.

Karen Rosasco's watermedia exploration and design class focuses on the completion of paintings started in the first two days of experimentation with color, texture and collage. After accumulating a pile of 6 - 10  exciting starts the class will study composition, value, focal point and line work to bring the paintings to a satisfactory finish. Everyone will go home with at least 4- 8 paintings ready for a frame and many will be ready for a juried show. There are demos every day along with individual critiques with class critiques beginning on Wednesday. With the emphasis on design the individual student may compete his work to a realistic, impressionistic or abstract finish. Each student is encouraged to retain his own style while searching for the best design solution to his energized start.

Workshop Daily Sample Schedule and Topics

Day One

·       Prepare three sheets of paper for the afternoon

·       Start 1: Demo of three starts with liquid acrylics

·       Design work with shapes and values from B&W newspaper photos

·       Review compositional possibilities - Gesso veils and shaping

Day Two

·       Start 2: Powdered charcoal

·       Discussion and demo of ways to continue

·       Start 3: Big dark

·       Design work with color harmony and focal points

·       Start 4: Drag

Day Three

·       Start 5: Collage

·       Start 6: Gel textures

·       Start 7: Crayon, wax, glue, paint

·       Design work with transitions and line work

·       Finish started work

·       Find a direction, size, content or concept, integrate shapes, modify colors

·       Critique of one painting

Day Four

·       Continue finishing work

·       Add texture, gesso, stamping, soft touches, line work

·       Find a figure, make a border, overlap shapes, build up depth, use grids

·       Critique of two paintings

Day Five

·       Finishing paintings - Look for relationships: quiet versus texture, warm versus cool, big versus small, hard edges versus soft edges, geometric versus organic, make little marks

·       2 PM final critique