The Art of Collage Portraiture
October 25 - 28, 2010
Registration Form
Sutton Studios & Gallery: Map and Directions
Visitor Information: Where to Stay, Eat, and Visit
Portrait of Giles Henderson, Master of Pembroke College, Oxford
The Syllabus
Collage is a very powerful way to tell a story of someone's life, going beyond the surface, expressing in a single composition what is, or was, most meaningful and significant to the portrait subject. In this workshop you will learn first hand my techniques and strategies for creating personal, powerful, beautiful evocative, magnificent collage portraits. The techniques taught in this master level workshop include my post-print application of traditional acrylic paint and other media to the printed canvas.
My collage portraits cross the digital and traditional divide, combining digital tools with the application of traditional media onto my printed canvases. In this special one week workshop I will lead a small group of students, six or less, through the entire process of researching, acquiring and organizing source material, composing the collage, using different techniques in Painter to apply imagery to the collage, and finishing with physical paint media on a 40 inch by 30 inch canvas print. You will end up with a beautiful physical canvas artwork to take home with you.
Barbara and I stand next to the portrait of Barbara's daughter that she created in class.
Barbara watching with excitement as her collage emerges from the printer!
Portrait of Dame Stephanie Shirley, created at the Oxford Internet Institute (detail below).
Preparation
This class is aimed at intermediate to advanced students who have already studied with me and understand the "muck up" painting technique (all of which is covered in the Painter Creativity Seminars). Preparation for the class includes reading chapter 8 of Painter 11 Creativity: Digital Artist's Handbook, and reviewing The Art of Collage Portraiture DVD set. The book and DVD set are included with the course fee.
You'll need to bring your own computer with the most recent version of Corel Painter 11 and a Wacom tablet (Intuos4 M or bigger recommended).
You will need to bring with you a folder of selected digitized source imagery to work from. Include potential foundation (primary) images that should be about 4000 pixels in the maximum dimension, and secondary images at least 2000 pixels in the maximum dimension for use in the background. Secondary images can include hand-writing, documents (can be any form of document, from scanned travel documents, certificates, awards, etc), musical scores (your subject's favorite music), digital photos, pictures of significant people, places, animals, objects,etc. Save your source files as flat TIFFs (in Adobe Photoshop you can verify Image > Mode > RGB Color and 8 Bits / Channel). Before attending the workshop please make sure all your source files can be opened in Corel Painter 11.
If possible get your subject, if a living person, involved with selecting what is important to them. Ask what they'd like to see reflected in the collage. Ask them to write down (by hand) words they'd like to share.
Start a folder for collecting your source images. Name each source image file with a meaningful name so you can identify what it is. Aim to have at least ten but no more than thirty source images in total. Avoid being overwhelmed with hundreds of images! PLEASE DO THE SELECTING, RENAMING AND, IF NEEDED, RESIZING, OF ALL YOUR SOURCE IMAGES BEFORE COMING TO CLASS.
Please prepare well ahead of the class. The acquisition of material for collage takes time. Jeremy sometimes spend months collecting material. The time you invest ahead of class will pay off in what you can learn and achieve in class. Thanks for your understanding and for taking the time to fully prepare yourself for this workshop.
Barbara working on her digital collage.
Class Hours
Monday - Thursday, 9:30am - 5pm
Class Fee
The course fee is $2,500, which includes my book Painter 11 Creativity: Digital Artist's Handbook and The Art of Collage Portraiture DVD set . Students are responsible for their own travel, lodgings and meals. To register, complete and send in the Registration Form.
Class Size
This class is limited to a maximum of six students.
Experimental Courtesy Print
The course fee includes one courtesy experimental canvas print (approximately 40 inches by 30 inches) of an image created during class, plus art materials used on the canvas print. The courtesy print, which is a print of the collage created during the workshop, is only intended to provide a practice surface for experimentation and is not a substitute for a professionally proofed and color corrected image. No guarantees are provided regarding the quality of the courtesy print. No proof prints or reprints will be made and no prints will be printed after the class is over.
Barbara applying acrylic paint to her print, with use of a palette knife.
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Online Training
PaintboxJ.com
New Book!
Painter 11 Creativity:
Digital Artist's Handbook
with Jeremy Sutton:
The Art of
The interface has not changed significantly between Painter X and Painter 11 so you can easily apply the lessons from all my earlier materials when using Corel Painter 11. Likewise my PaintboxJ Painter 11 tutorials can all be easily applied in earlier versions of Painter. I do strongly recommend upgrading to Painter 11 if you currently have an earlier version. The newest Painter is the best yet. It is significantly faster than earlier versions and includes a whole new class of wonderful brushes (the Hard Media brushes).
For information on other Painter resources out there, please explore the Links page.
PPA members will earn one merit for attending this course.
Learn more about the
Master Forum.