Seattle Atelier Color System (intro)

Once students have begun to master tonal divisionism or correctly related tone groups or families (referred to by Camille Pissarro as “the greatest innovation of Impressionism”) they begin working in color.

Our system uses three hues (warm, straight, cool) for all primaries and secondaries, so it’s an 18 hue color-wheel.

Students mix ten complete color wheels on top of a set of ten gray-scale value cards, matching the value of each. 

Meldrum: The Scientific Artist

Hayward Veal walks the full length of his narrow studio because this is the only way to paint. 

It is Max Meldrum’s way. 

Examine the subject from a distance. 

You are objective. 

Detached both from the subject and yourself. 

The artist, Meldrum says, is a scientist of appearances.

Bibliophile Confessions

A partial view, from a video, of the Seattle Atelier library where many ring-bound copies of print-outs of old manuscripts and very rare artist's teaching and studio notes, letters and diaries from the archives at Harvard, Yale, the Smithsonian, National Gallery-Archives of American Art and many other libraries wait for you.

Open to the public without charge during business hours, with several scanners for free use and very inexpensive flash drives available for purchase.
There are couches, tables, chairs, natural light and a kitchen on the other side of the door with free coffee and snacks.

Visit us soon on historic Jackson Street in Seattle’s arts-filled Central District and Little Saigon neighborhoods, where there’s usually some kind of great festival happening.

Seattle Atelier Still Life Courses

All our still life classes are alla prima and solvent free.

Students finish each painting in one session after carefully creating their palettes as a scale of relationships.

In the above image student Jennifer Will creates a sight size Alla Prima still life in less than an hour, walking back and forth from her focus point, after first taking a couple hours to create a group of pre-mixed correctly related tone families and colors within each. 

Students enjoy getting at a subjects visual essence in this objective way and the classroom is open to students at all times and they often stay well past the four hour to six hour class times. 

In the image below student Kathy Paul stands at her “focus point” twelve feet from her canvas, sensing out her shapes as she tries out her initial tone group “hypotheses”, adjusting constantly at this stage by physically adjusting large piles of paint on her palette and testing them against each other. 

That is not a value-match of each area but a painting of their relationships. 

 Anyone familiar with the general textbooks for the program also knows how many diagrams, charts, exercises and other practices help explain this both natural and analytical process. Frequent instructor painting demonstrations show the process.  

(Below: Student’s Alla Prima works in progress. Limited and full-color palettes)

 

Twice Yearly Free Introductory Classes and Painting Demonstrations, Daniel Smith, Seattle (2014-2020).

Perceptual Painting in the Pacific Northwest

Students of Seattle Atelier have been rising to the challenges of painting in a perceptual painting program with outdoor painting built into every class, no matter the weather, year round. 

Many urban settings close to the classroom have been where we head out to work, rain or shine, using the same principles with which we paint alla prima still life in the classroom.

 

Students (above) making Alla Prima copies of the work of Corot, creating their palettes as a scale of relationships, tested and adjusted, before they all go outdoors to repeat the process while executing another Alla Prima painting in the open air on the streets of Seattle.

Teaching at JSS in Civita

I’ve been invited by Israel Hershberg to join the affiliate faculty at the JSS in Civita, Summer Art School & Residency in Italy. 

To learn more about his amazing program look here:

https://jssincivita.com/artist-residency-program/