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Keiko Tanabe
www.ktanabefineart.com

4 Day Workshop

Jan 9, 10, 11, and 12, 2024

Theme:  Watercolor: Keep It Simple and Strong

RECOMMENDED EXPERIENCE

All levels (basic knowledge & some previous experiences strongly recommended to benefit from this workshop)

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR

Keiko Tanabe, AWS, NWS, AIS, LPAPA.  Often working en plein air, her atmospheric watercolors perfectly capture a sense of time and place. Through her use of color, textures, and signature brushwork, Keiko’s landscapes and cityscapes, beautifully convey both the exotic and the simple scenes of the many places she travels.  Never attending art school, Keiko took only one drawing class to learn basic technical skills before she started painting in 2005.

One year later, after learning basic drawing and watercolor painting skills at a local community school in San Diego, Keiko decided to paint full-time. From then on, she intensely taught herself to be fluent in watercolor painting, just as one would do to master a foreign language. Her subjects include landscape, cityscape, waterscape and interior scenes, which will be demonstrated in the workshop, using representational and impressionistic compositions. Since 2011, Keiko has completed successfully numerous workshops and live demonstrations around the world.  She has 4 DVDs and several books of her art and has been featured in many art magazines.

WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION

This workshop is designed for those who would like to gain a better understanding of methods and techniques to make a watercolor painting that is simple yet strong.  The goal is to capture the essence of the subject that conveys a certain mood and atmosphere.  The process of simplification begins with visualization.  In representational art, this ability to see the end result of a painting, through the mind’s eye, is instrumental in realizing an artist’s vision.  The ability to do so and quickly is especially useful when painting en plein air but it is also quite helpful even when one paints from a photo.  Through various exercises and step-by-step demonstrations, Keiko will show you how to take the initial inspiration, through the simplification process, to an expressive painting that is strong in composition and content.

Subject matters include landscape, cityscape, waterscape and/or interior, which will be demonstrated in a manner that is more representational and impressionistic rather than abstract.

The introduction focuses on the fundamentals including getting to know our materials and seeing things with an artist’s eye. The areas of topic covered in this workshop include: a preliminary drawing and composition, a variety of techniques in paint application and brush handling, what makes a good design, understanding of relationship of dark and light values, planning & intuition, and how to edit complex visual information.

We will paint different subject(s) every day.  Each day there will be a small exercise which will then be applied to a painting later in the day.

There will be plenty of one-on-one guidance and a question-and-answer session on a daily basis.  A class critique may be conducted at the end.

Material List (suggested):

Available on request

3-day Course Description (Example):

Day 1 – AM: Introduction.  First demo (emphasis on tonal values and core techniques).  I will start with a value sketch of a subject of my choice.  Students paint from the same reference.  Individual guidance follows.  Lunch.  PM: Second demo will be a more complex version of the morning painting. One-on-one instruction follows when students paint.

Day 2 – AM: Review of Day 1.  First demo (focus on colors and edges).  Students paint from my demo with my individual guidance.  Lunch. PM: Second demo will be a more complex version of the morning painting.  One-on-one instruction follows when students paint.

Day 3 – AM: Review of Day 2.  First demo (emphasis on design and emotional content) followed by individual guidance when students paint.  Lunch.  PM: Second demo will be a review of everything learned.  Group viewing and critique at the end.

Keiko Tanabe On YouTube