Creative Courses
Learn to illustrate a venue two ways: the hard way, and the easy way. We'll be learning one and two point perspective and learn how to illustrate a building the old fashioned way: with pencil, paper, ruler and eraser. Although this is the time consuming route, it's always important to know the technique before you learn the shortcut. During the second half of the course, we'll learn to do it the quick and dirty way, so you can spend less time illustrating and more time creating.
There are three main ways to create a pattern with artwork: the first is to paint the entire pattern as one piece. The second is to paint in pieces and arrange manually in Photoshop. The third is to paint in pieces and arrange a repeating pattern in Illustrator. In this course, we'll learn the first method and use Photoshop, talking about the advantages of painting in pieces as well as how to pattern out your artwork.
In this course, we will cover common styles of flourishing, common mistakes, how to build muscle memory, visually balance your flourish placement, and finish with examples of how you can apply flourishes to multi-line pieces.
Watercolor III will build on those foundations and bring you into the realm of creating floral and leaf shapes! The first part of the course will be devoted to studies of the anatomy of a flower and learning different centers and petal shapes as well as basic composition. Firm grounding in the formation and foundations of actual florals is integral to creating your own interpretation that is still recognizable as a flower to your audience. We will be learning how to take actual flower anatomical parts and combine them together creating a stylized version. The ultimate goal of this course, explored in the latter half of the course, is to help you create non-photorealistic floral and leaf artwork of your own.
This course, on the other hand, will explore a more whimsical interpretation of line botanicals. We'll be learning how to loosen up a bit and create botanicals with loose movement, imprecisions. I'll walk you through how to embrace imperfections in your piece and stylize your botanical drawings.
We love spools of dreamy hand-dyed silk ribbon from other creatives as much as anyone. Trust me, we have boxes on boxes of ribbons in the office! But sometimes you just need a few pieces for a small project, or perhaps you just can't quite find the right color to match your project. Maybe the price is too high for you and your client, or you just love fabric and would love to know how to dye it yourself.
No matter the reason, this course will teach you the basics of sourcing, dyeing, and using fabric in your creative pursuits. We'll look at everything including how to tear fabric down to ribbons, dye fabric to match specific projects, and use fabric for large scale lettering and painting projects.
Watercolor II is all about color mixing!
Perhaps you need to match a client's existing wedding colors...
Perhaps you have an amazing color in mind, but you don't have that particular shade on hand...
Perhaps you already have that shade in watercolor, but you need to do pointed pen calligraphy in a matching ink...
There are many situations in which you might want to custom mix your ink or paint colors. In this course we will be discussing how to become familiar with the way your paints behave and then how to harness that knowledge to make beautiful custom paint and ink colors.
Cyanotype printing, invented in 1842, originally had its origins in reproductions. It's a photographic printing method once used regularly for the production of blueprints (psst -- BLUEprints...CYANotype...that signature blue color... you get it ;) )
Aside from this traditional usage, it can also be applied artistically to create some gorgeous one-of-a-kind prints using materials you probably already have lying around the house! (Aside from the photographic formula, of course...)
We'll go through the process and walk you through how to create beautiful botanical prints using cyanotype.
Never worked with watercolors before? This class will help you get started with a strong foundation in the medium of watercolor with topics such as mixing your palette of colors, layering your paint and playing with tonality, applying your paints in wet on wet and wet on dry methods, as well as the basics of color theory. You will learn to design your own color wheel to apply what you've learned, building color up or muting tones down.
The method taught in this course is similar to the Japanese method of Suminagashi and can be used to create beautiful marbled designs on paper products and beyond. We'll go through the supplies, process, and some potential applications where you can incorporate paper marbling into your work.
So much of what we stand for is establishing, maintaining and nurturing a positive work/life balance and that includes indulging and nurturing your own creativity outside your usual work. Each semester will hold several creative courses, just to keep the inspiration alive and to expand your horizons.
We are a very detail oriented company, and in this course we get into the nitty gritty of bow tying, different ties, and the tricks behind the perfect bow. We also look at wax seals and give some valuable tips on how to maximize your time and assemble invitations with more efficiency and attention to detail.