WITH JENNIFER MOSES
FIVE MEETINGS
Tuesdays
March 11
March 18
March 25
April 1
April 8
2025
11 a.m. - 2:30 p.m. eastern time
“Drawing is the artist's most direct and spontaneous expression, a species of writing; it reveals, better than does painting, the true personality.”— Edgar Degas
ONLINE WORKSHOP
Drawing is the language of ideas.
In this workshop we will use drawing as a means to find and develop an idea and translate these preliminary works into one or more paintings. Over the span of the workshop, using both drawing and painting materials, you will sketch and sketch and sketch some more! It is in the sketch that your ideas will be born. We will begin with sketchbook prompts, touching on different art idioms: observation, abstraction, and imagination. In addition, you will create some developed drawings that will form the basis of a final painting.
Through presentations, critique, and guided assignments we will develop our analytical thinking about the union of form and content necessary to give a visual voice to an idea.
Meetings will be held on Zoom and work will be shared on Padlet, an online platform.
WITH LUCY MacGILLIS
THREE MEETINGS
April 4-6, 2025
Friday, Saturday, Sunday
two meetings per day:
10:30 a.m. and 3 p.m. eastern time
In this intensive ONLINE painting class, we'll create our own oil paint from Italian pigments. Once we've created our full earth color palette, we'll prepare gradient studies in order to better understand the colors we are working with. Next, we'll sketch a composition of lemons in our respective studios. Finally, we'll create a still life of lemons. Each of the three days will include group discussions based on the images uploaded by the participants, guided by Lucy MacGillis. Lectures on the color yellow in painting, the lemon in the history of painting and demos from MacGillis' studio in Italy will also be included. We will discuss our paintings of lemons in group discussions/critiques over zoom.
Prior to the class, participants will receive a kit from Zecchi in Florence containing Fabriano oil painting paper, the pigments of the earth palette, walnut oil, and a palette knife.
The cost of materials from Zecchi is included in the workshop fee.
Portraits from Observed to Imagined
WITH ELIZABETH REAGH
TUESDAYS
April 15
April 22
April 29
May 6
May 13
2025
1 - 4:30 p.m. eastern time
A five-week ONLINE portrait-painting workshop in which quick observational sketches will be the starting point for portrait paintings. The beauty of the 2 - 5 minute drawing is that the artist is forced to make quick decisions — resulting in an expressive record of the essence of the sitter and a window into the artist’s response. The drawings provide just enough information to apply to a painting, without allowing for copying — translation is the name of the game here.
We will explore the use of color, composition, imagination and intuition in creating characters who may or may not resemble the original sketch. This class will rely entirely on direct observation and imagination.
WITH RICK FOX
May 16, 17, and 18, 2025
10 a.m.-4 p.m.
IN PERSON AT BLACK POND
Working from observation, we will spend three days translating the head through various exercises using pencil, charcoal, sculpture, and paint. This workshop will emphasize understanding the head through perception and the physicality of the mediums. Spontaneous invention will be encouraged.
Price includes lunches and model.
WITH ELIZABETH O'REILLY
Thursday, May 29-Sunday, June 1, 2025
IN PERSON AT BLACK POND
Using one object of your choice, you’ll receive 100 prompts for ways to paint it in watercolor or the water-based medium of your choice. Some prompts will be slow and thoughtful, some will be fast and furious, and some will stretch your color choices. Your object could be a pineapple, an artichoke, or a witch hat — anything that will engage you over several days. Other possibilities: painting your object in a good or bad mood, with a blindfold on, or on a large scale. To expand your options, acrylics, pastels, and collage may be used in addition to watercolor. The goals of the workshop will be to break out of old habits, increase your proficiency, and have fun doing it! Lunch is provided each day.
WITH CATHERINE DRABKIN
Thursday-Sunday
August 7-10, 2025
10 a.m.-4 p.m.
IN PERSON AT BLACK POND
Why do people across cultures love music? Is there an equivalent in painting and can we use it to find inspiration each day in the studio?
Our senses find and take pleasure in patterns: waves breaking on the shore, every form of dance, a wooden fence, or an architectural facade. From the rug on the floor, and the treads of our shoes, to the dishes on the table and the panes of glass in a window, we are surrounded by visual music.
In this workshop you will explore how rhythm infuses the natural world and our constructed world with beauty. Through observation of an expansive, evolving still life in our spacious studio, we will play with color shapes to create lively paintings that transform reality into an individual, unique statement that reveals how you see and how your imagination can be transformative. Dive into the search and celebration of visual rhythm using color to develop your skills with form and light to create and communicate with our class and beyond.
Gouache will be a primary material, but oil or acrylic paint are also wonderful. We will come away from the experience with an exciting body of work to build on, and new ways to harvest our innate pleasures. All levels are welcome. Lunches will be provided.
WITH MAUREEN NATHAN AND NANCY GRUSKIN
FIVE MEETINGS
Wednesdays
October 15 - November 12, 2025
11 a.m.-2 p.m. eastern time
To play is to yield oneself to a kind of magic, and to give a lie to the inconvenient world of fact. — Eileen Agar
ONLINE: Much can be learned from exploring one theme through a variety of 2D and 3D processes. Prior to the start of this online workshop, participants will select a painting from the history of art. This painting will serve as the springboard for drawings, prints, collages, and sculptures. Maureen will lead a variety of drawing exercises that will expand the artists’ alphabet of marks and reinforce the drawing vocabulary unique to each artist. She will also introduce intaglio and relief printmaking using recycled materials with water-based inks. Artists will explore paper cut-outs and the medium of collage with Nancy and shift their focus to 3D processes with the construction of paper, cardboard, and papier-mâché sculptures. Our aim in this workshop will be to generate unexpected and compelling outcomes in relation to our source material. The emphasis will be on play and experimentation.
Maureen and Nancy will be participants in this workshop, as well as instructors. We will use Zoom to meet as a group and all work will be shared on Padlet. Slide presentations and demos will supplement both instructors’ exercises. A small craft press or access to an etching press is required for the printmaking exercises.
WITH ROTEM AMIZUR
Thursday, October 30-Sunday November 2, 2025
10 a.m.-4 p.m. eastern time
10 a.m.-5 p.m. on Sunday
IN-PERSON WORKSHOP AT BLACK POND. Collage gives one the opportunity to paint without fear. It turns looking and composing into a playful game, where shapes of color are easily cut and moved. We will start by painting paper; participants will create their own color palette. Throughout the workshop we will investigate color families, rhyming shapes, and echoes in painting.
We will focus on the connection between the model and her surroundings, first through art history and then through looking and experiencing life in front of us. When painting something alive like the model, suddenly the wall, the chair, the flowers, everything around her becomes alive and part of the composition. By prioritizing that connection, and applying observation and invention, surprising harmonies will occur. Lunch will be provided.
WITH LUCY MacGILLIS
THIS WORKSHOP IS FULL
FIVE MEETINGS
Fridays
January 10
January 17
January 24
January 31
February 7
2025
11 a.m. - 2:30 p.m. Eastern time
In this online class, we'll focus on the masterpieces of four female Italian painters, investigating what it is about them that is timelessly captivating. Using the method of transcription, we will draw from these paintings without copying them, but searching for the brilliant uses of rhythm, duality and repetition within the geometry of these compositions. In each session we will explore a specific painting at length in a group discussion over zoom. After the introduction to each painting, participants will have a week to prepare a drawing transcription, as well as a chromatic study created with oil paints, to better grasp the use of color in that day's masterpiece. MacGillis will present demos from her studio in Italy to show how she goes about mixing the colors in the paintings using a limited earth palette and palette knife.
Each participant will receive a kit in the mail, prior to the course, containing the prints of the five paintings we will transcribe as well as paper measured in proportion to the works. Primed Fabriano paper will also be provided for the color painting studies.
WITH LUCY MacGILLIS
THIS WORKSHOP IS FULL
FIVE MEETINGS
Mondays
February 24
March 3
March 10
March 17
March 24
2025
11 a.m. - 2:30 p.m. Eastern time
ONLINE WORKSHOP. In transcribing we study from paintings, rather than simply copy them. Investigating what it is about masterpiece compositions that makes them timeless helps us push our own painting further. In this intensive five-week online course, we will explore the great art of Sicily. We will study the Roman mosaics of Piazza Armerina, into the renaissance with Antonello da Messina, and the Baroque masterpieces by Caravaggio, as well as modern Sicilian artists. We will transcribe from a selection of masterpieces and discuss our work each week. Prints of the paintings, and Fabriano drawing and painting paper will be mailed to participants prior to the class. Meetings will be held on Zoom and work will be shared on Padlet, the online platform.
WITH NANCY McCARTHY
THIS WORKSHOP IS FULL
Sept 10-Dec 17, 2024
Eight meetings
Tuesdays 6:00 -9:30 p.m.
eastern time
September 10 and 24
October 8 and 22
November 5 and 19
December 3 and 17
2024
There are 3 main objectives in this ONLINE class:
• To identify aspects of your work that are distinct and personal, and to explore ways of developing and fortifying those aspects.
• To determine areas of your work that are weak and/or diminish your work and (using a variety of exercises), work to improve those areas.
• To establish a consistent, disciplined painting practice.
The goal of creating more personal and powerful paintings will be addressed by considering the following issues: content, composition/format, color, surface as well as materials and craft. We will explore the aspects of painting that interest each student most, including experimentation with materials and conceptual and technical approaches to painting or more traditional work from observation. Classes consist of discussion, image presentations and critique. Each student will develop a set of written goals as well as a painting schedule. Students must be present and are encouraged to participate in all discussion and critiques. Students will post new work, preliminary drawings, and work in progress on the Padlet each week for discussion. Additionally, students are required to research and identify their relatives, 3 artists whose work shares common elements with their own work or the work they aspire to do.
Those who want more structure and/or direction will be given assignments tailored to their particular needs. Group discussion of student work along with looking at contemporary and historical painting will enhance the class.
Meetings will be held on Zoom and work will be shared on Padlet, the online platform.
WITH CATHERINE KEHOE
THIS WORKSHOP IS FULL
EIGHT MEETINGS
Wednesdays
January 15
January 22
January 29
February 5
February 12
February 19
February 26
March 5 (skip this week)
March 12
2025
11 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Eastern time
ONLINE WORKSHOP. For the first half of the workshop, portraits from art history will be the point of departure for study of pictorial structure, with a focus on the head. We will touch upon the universal proportions of the head; a simple, intuitive drawing method will be introduced to help with drawing accuracy. Mediums will include graphite, charcoal, collage, gouache, acrylic and/or oil paint or materials you have on hand. Each participant will choose and examine one or two images from art history and generate permutations through exercises that lead to simplification and abstraction. This rigorous and wide-ranging analysis of images from our painting ancestors will feed our own work and imaginations as we engage with images that speak to us still. In the second half of the workshop, you will take the experience from multiple exercises and turn your attention to the head in the mirror. The head we see every day is a meaningful, personal, and convenient subject for a painting. This segment takes a reductive approach to painting the head, seeking how little information is enough. Using paint, we will investigate whether translating the head into a few accurate shapes of color and value can create a truer likeness than a detailed description can. We will meet on Zoom and share work on the Padlet platform.
WITH CATHERINE KEHOE
THIS WORKSHOP IS FULL
(a second section has been added)
EIGHT MEETINGS
Wednesdays
April 2
April 9
April 16
April 23
April 30
May 7
May 14
May 21
2025
11 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Eastern time
ONLINE WORKSHOP. For the first half of the workshop, portraits from art history will be the point of departure for study of pictorial structure, with a focus on the head. We will touch upon the universal proportions of the head; a simple, intuitive drawing method will be introduced to help with drawing accuracy. Mediums will include graphite, charcoal, collage, gouache, acrylic and/or oil paint or materials you have on hand. Each participant will choose and examine one or two images from art history and generate permutations through exercises that lead to simplification and abstraction. This rigorous and wide-ranging analysis of images from our painting ancestors will feed our own work and imaginations as we engage with images that speak to us still. In the second half of the workshop, you will take the experience from multiple exercises and turn your attention to the head in the mirror. The head we see every day is a meaningful, personal, and convenient subject for a painting. This segment takes a reductive approach to painting the head, seeking how little information is enough. Using paint, we will investigate whether translating the head into a few accurate shapes of color and value can create a truer likeness than a detailed description can. We will meet on Zoom and share work on the Padlet platform.
WITH DAVID HORNUNG
THIS WORKSHOP IS FULL
June 12-16, 2025
Five days
Thursday - Monday
10 a.m. - 4 p.m.
IN PERSON AT BLACK POND. In this relaxed and supportive five-day workshop, we make small scale acrylic paintings that explore an improvisational approach to abstraction. The emphasis is on experimentation and workflow with special focus on the interplay between intention and chance in the creative process. We use various tools and both additive and subtractive processes to generate surprising visual events that can be developed into compelling abstract compositions. Studio work is complemented by slide shows and discussions that examine both historical and contemporary abstract painting. Painters at all levels of experience are welcome to participate. Workshop fee include lunches and some provided supplies. Please bring the other supplies on the materials list below.
WORKSHOPS ARE HELD ONLINE OR IN PERSON.
PLEASE READ EACH WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION FOR DETAILS.
Hours for online workshops: Determined by individual instructors.
In-person workshops begin at 10 a.m. eastern time.
RECORDING POLICY:
Online classes at Black Pond are meant to be live and interactive.
The voices of all participants are vital to the experience. We seek to protect the intellectual property of our instructors. For these reasons, we generally do not record online meetings. If you are registered for a workshop and need to miss a meeting, please contact us (not your instructor) via email at blackpondstudio@gmail.com, 24 hours in advance to request a recording of that meeting. Recordings are available for 48 hours.
We do not record entire workshops.
To register for a workshop, click the "REGISTER" link below the title.
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Contact us at blackpondstudio@gmail.com with questions, or to be added to a waiting list.