Oil Painting Workshop with past Visiting Artist Francis Sills

SOLD OUT, please email Erin at [email protected] to be placed on the waiting list if a spot becomes available.

This workshop will explore how color can function as both shape and light. Students will work with both paper collage and oil paint through an analysis and transcription of Master paintings. By seeing how a painting is constructed from spots of color, and by training the eye to work from the general to the specific, the student will create a landscape painting based on one of their own photographs. Class capacity is six students.

About the Instructor: Francis Sills

Francis Sills was born and raised in central New Jersey, relocating to Charleston, SC in May of 2011. Exposed to the wonders of the natural world at an early age through hiking and fishing, his childhood was spent drawing and constructing things out of cardboard. Both his grandfathers were good with their hands; one as a watercolorist, the other with carpentry and building. His ongoing series "The flora" utilizes the flowers and plants from his home garden. Some are painted plein air while others are in containers brought into the studio and juxtaposed with various shaped mirrors and objects. During his residency, the artist will continue augmenting the reality of the flora through set ups, which both multiply the forms and fracture the space. Museum Visitors will encounter paintings that begin to grow alongside the plants and flowers in front of them.

Sills is an adjunct faculty member at the College of Charleston where he teaches drawing and painting. He has exhibited both nationally and internationally, and his work is in many private collections.

Materials needed:

- oil paint (the brand depends on your budget, but the colors should include

titanium white, cadmium yellow, yellow ochre, cadmium red, alizarin crimson,

burnt sienna, ultramarine blue, cerulean blue, and viridian)

- 2 palette knives (a small one and a larger one)

- disposable waxed paper palette (12” x 16”)

- 3 canvas boards (either 9” x 12” or 11” x 14”)

- glue stick

- scissors

- 8” x 10” print out of a landscape photograph that you took (or a JPEG image on

an iPad or laptop)