Oil Painting Workshop

Elizabeth Bygler, Artist and Art Instructor will be traveling to Bedford at the end of January to share her knowledge and help to hone the skills of area artists. Elizabeth's workshop will cover a topic familiar (but not conquered) to many artists; Creating a Painting from a Photograph. Sounds simple enough doesn't it? It may appear so at first glance but this just is not so. In addition to basic techniques and skills required of a painter, some difficult questions need to be answered when working from a painting; What needs to be eliminated or even added in order to create a good composition for your painting?, How do you adjust and use values to create a painting that just pops off the canvas?, How do you adjust perspective (both aerial and linear) to create a sense of depth?, How do you avoid the color and value distortion that often occurs when working from a photo? Elizabeth will cover this and more, providing participants with a solid foundation from which to continue their art.

A Bit About the Instructor

Elizabeth has been an artist all of her life. She received her degree in fashion design at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York and later went on to receive her Fine Arts Degree from Saint Mary's College of Maryland. She has been teaching to a loyal following of students for the last ten years at her Flying Cats Studio in Leonardtown, Maryland. She is a founding member of both the North End Gallery and The Color and Light Society and has works in homes across the country. Some of her work is also available for viewing and purchase at the Bower Center. Elizabeth's studio is on the Southern Maryland Trails Tour (page 17 on the pdf link). Elizabeth is always happy to share her extensive knowledge and teaches with the philosophy that no-one should feel intimidated about expressing themselves in their work. Her classes and workshops are both informative and lots of fun. She is so popular in fact that a waiting list has been established to attend her regular classes in Maryland.

Workshop Information

Date/Times: January 31st 9am-4pm and February 1st 11am-5pm

Cost: $110

Don't have painting supplies? Paint and canvas board will be available for purchase from the instructor - **Prior notice is required

Location: Bower Center for the Arts

305 North Bridge Street

Bedford, VA 24523

(540) 586-4235

Registration: registration forms may be downloaded at: www.bedfordartacademy.org/painting.htm

Our Introduction and a New Website

Since this is the first Blog for the Bower Center, I want to take this opportunity to introduce myself and the Center to you the reader. As an aside - I am so new to blogging that this is my first toe dip in the waters of blogging; please be patient with me. First of all, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Amy and I am the Director at the Bower Center and will be the one to provide most of the updates here. I am an Artist myself and enjoy working with graphite, color pencil, oils and even dabble with pastels. Perhaps I will share a sampling of my work at some point. (Have to think on that one :) The Bower Center is a wonderful place that has taken on the sometimes daunting task of providing an all around venue for the Arts in Bedford. In the upcoming year we are planning a full schedule of Fine Art Exhibits, Performing Arts, Music Education through our wonderful Music Lab as well as classes and workshops in a broad variety of Visual Arts.

So... Why the blog? We are doing our best to keep up with the times and I plan to use blogging to not only keep people informed of what is new at the Center, but would also like to use this as an opportunity to share with everyone general information of interest to followers of the Arts. Updates will be posted (hopefully) on a weekly basis with one of those posts each month featuring an Artist from our center. I am also hoping to have our volunteers, artist and possibly board members contribute on a regular basis.

I would love to get feedback, and have readers share their thoughts, suggestions and artistic experiences!

We have just updated our website which you can find a link to on the right of this page. Some of the pages have not been completed yet, but I am getting there - Whew! Who knew that creating this site from scratch would take up so much of my time? We have some wonderful new art classes coming up that can be viewed on the site. Check it out. We also have new artists exhibiting in our shop and I will post some images of their work as soon as possible.

That's all for right now but I will bring more info soon. Thanks for reading.