Contemporary Composition With Still Life
Contemporary Composition With Still Life
An Online Workshop Held Over 2 Sundays
January 16 & 22
11am-1pm, 2-5pm EST
Heather V McLeod, Instructor
Ready to make original, creative work?
In Contemporary Composition With Still Life, take a journey through compositional analysis, color theory, and narrative development to create engaging, self-directed work. This 2-Day Online Workshop will help students to use oil painting techniques in the service of content and image-making by, using simple still life objects that hold personal interest to the student.
Students will learn and discuss how subtle changes to composition and color can drastically change the narrative of a painting.
• On Day 1, Workshop participants will begin by creating an original still life composition using a limited color palette.
.• On Day 2 the same objects will be used, but in a rearranged composition with a different color palette.
There will be one week between sessions so that students have time to work on their compositions. Working from life with real still life objects is preferred, but students may work from photographs in this workshop. We are not necessarily after realism for its own sake, but rather for the sake of narrative.
The instructor , Heather V. McLeod, will provide painting demonstrations and continually discuss conceptual instigation: how to gather and use references and any other aspects of ideation that may arise in creating a composition. McLeod will also offer critiques throughout the workshop.
All of our online workshops are recorded and made available for viewing for up to one month after the event.
Supplies and Materials
Oil paint (basic colors, to which more may be added):
Titanium white
Ivory black
Yellow ochre,
Flesh ochre
Blue/black
·Supports: several small canvases/ panels
Linseed oil
A variety of brushes
Heather V McLeod received a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design in 2016 and her MFA from The New York Academy of Art in 2021. In 2017, she was awarded a Fulbright Study/Research Award in Perugia, Italy where she lived and worked for a year. She is a recent recipient of two Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grants and The Leslie T. and Francis Posey Scholarship. She has been featured in a number of exhibitions in the U.S. and abroad and has been the recipient of a number of art related awards, including most recently AXA Art Prize Finalist. She is currently based in Manhattan and her work explores identity and the psychology by which we perceive others.
