Private Art Instruction

Whether you're a beginner looking to explore your talents or an experienced artist seeking to refine your techniques and learn something new, together, we will help you reach new heights in your artistic journey. My classes offer a supportive and nurturing environment to experience the joy of creating and progressing toward your artistic goals. 

The date, time, and main topic of our session together will be confirmed by email. 

Topics we can explore together include (but are not limited to):

• Critique and Feedback: Receive constructive feedback on your artwork to identify areas for improvement and areas of strength. Learn how to critique your work and develop a critical eye.

• Business Development and Marketing for Creatives: Gain insight into the business side of being an artist, including marketing your artwork, pricing your pieces, building an online presence, writing grants, participating in exhibitions and art shows, and much more. Do you want to quit your day job or start building your creative business while in school? Receive personalized guidance on advancing your artistic development, setting achievable goals, and overcoming creative blocks. Explore ways to stay inspired and motivated in your artistic practice with me. 

• Colour Theory: Dive into the world of colour theory, learning about colour mixing, colour harmonies, temperature, value, and saturation. Explore using colour to convey mood, atmosphere, and emotion in your artwork.

• Composition and Design: Balance, harmony, focal points, the rule of thirds - learn how to effectively design your artwork to create visually appealing and dynamic compositions.

• Painting Nature's Textures: Close or far away, let's talk about all things bark, trees, leaves, dirt, sand, grass, etc and how we can best represent them.   

• Creating Realistic Feathers: Ah, birds. They are some of the most elegant animals we see daily but are challenging to capture in paint. Come deep dive into the anatomy of feathers with me and learn how to create their unique patterns and textures. Grid outlines, layering, colour washes, and using contrast to make individual feathers pop in a subtle way to bring the animals together as one. 

• Creating Realistic Fur: One of my favourite textures to create. Join me and learn how to layer, highlight, and use transparent colour washes to add depth to your fur like never before. We will explore brush techniques, paint consistency, the colours of white and shadows and more.

• Creating Realistic Scales: A challenge for any skill level, scales and the necessary perspective for round animals are complex and patient endeavours. Learn how to paint individual scales, map the transitioning shape of scales across your animals, and learn a few tricks not to paint every single one. 

• Creating Realistic Skin: From the bumpy and textured skin of elephants to the soft skin of amphibians, learn how to use colour and everyone in between. 

• Eyes and Animal Expressions: Reflections, dilation, framing, contrast, moisture, and more go into painting eyes and conveying species' emotions. 

• Introduction to Airbrushing: Explore my set-up and workflow of how I airbrush, test out my equipment, and learn how to clean and care for an airbrush. Includes the 'why isn't it spraying' meditation mantra and troubleshooting. 

• Bokeh Airbrushing: The art of creating soft backgrounds that make the foreground pop.

• Going BIG with Murals: Take your painting to a large scale

I provide all entry-level supplies for working with acrylic paints, but you are welcome to bring your favourite gear to use as well.