Art workshop with James Tatum
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On the morning of the 27th of February I, with some other art students met with a popular artist James Tatum who specialized in landscape paintings and was popular for the way he expressed himself in his art and the methods which he used while painting.
The session took a total of 4 hours with a 15 minute break halfway through. At the start, we were shown and presented with the methods and ways in which he recorded his surroundings and how he expressed it in his art. We were also shown a specific array of techniques and medium that he used when painting. After a short talk from James, he carried out a demonstration in which he painted an art piece in a very short period of time and also managed to show all the points although it wasn’t one of his best it was certainly enlightening to watch.
After the demonstration, we went to our various canvases which were already laid out, and then we picked out specific photos from either the variety presented on the tables or from our personal galleries. I personally picked one which I took during my Duke of Edinburgh expedition with the school. Before I made a layout of the key aspects and major details of the picture with a piece of charcoal. As I was done I was then instructed by James to paint in the dark areas of the painting before proceeding into the much lighter areas.
In the picture, there was also a very visible separation in the clouds and he said I should try and incorporate it into the painting by contrasting the colours. He also told everyone and urged everyone to be more expressive and try not to always colour within the line, that we should try to be as free as possible when painting the landscapes. Halfway into the art piece he went around and gave his ‘’2 cents’’ on what we could do better and also what we had done well. When he got to me he explained how I could use some more natural colours or colours that could naturally be found in nature, and because I didn’t have any of those colours on my palette he brought some from his palette and I used it to brighten the lighter areas of the image.
This method was very different to what I was used to because I had to use a lot more paint than I was used to, and I felt more free than usual and I felt that I could express more than usual when I was painting the landscape. When I first painted the sky above the vegetation I made it very light blue and it looked very bright and didn’t connect with the other parts and pieces of the landscape, and because of this I had to mix the brown colours into the sky, and by doing this it made all the parts of the painting connect and made harmony in the painting. Reaching the end of the painting I stepped back and observed the painting from afar following the steps demonstrated to us by James and it made me see the things I missed and, the things I did well and also the things I could add to make the artwork look better. I also left out a lot of the detail from the original image because it would have taken the freedom and would have limited the level of expression when I painted it, which was the exact thing we were not to do because it would make you stressed and we would enjoy and take in the original beauty of the final art piece.
Written by Chizi