Creative Adventures and Lessons Learned

TIPS for TAKING and TEACHING Art Workshops!

Estimated read time: 1:20

Summary

In this video from waddellwebisodes, the creator shares insights and personal anecdotes from both taking and teaching art workshops. They reflect on their experiences with workshops in various locations, including Florida, Oklahoma, New York, and Utah, covering topics such as dealing with nerves, engaging with students, and the unexpected challenges of teaching. Several amusing and personal stories are recounted, emphasizing the importance of effective communication and realistic expectations in art education. Despite self-doubt and humorous mishaps, the creator encourages viewers to engage with their content further through Patreon or their website.

Highlights

The creator talks about growing their YouTube channel while humorously regretting a T-shirt purchase 😂.
Experiences from teaching first workshops in Florida with unexpected Disney animators attending 🎨.
Stories about teaching workshops in extremely hot Oklahoma conditions 🥵.
Encounters with retired doctors learning classical painting for the first time 👨‍⚕️➡️🎨.
Funny mishap before a presentation involving coffee and an embarrassing incident 😂.
Key advice for workshop leaders: communicate well, apologize if needed, and avoid awkward situations 😉.

Key Takeaways

Whether teaching or taking workshops, setting clear expectations is key 🎨.
Always maintain a sense of humor and be prepared for unexpected moments 😂.
Effective communication is essential for a successful workshop experience 📢.
Stay humble and continue learning, even as a teacher 🌟.
Creating a supportive and positive environment enhances the learning experience 🤗.

Overview

In this entertaining video, the creator delves into the art of teaching workshops, sharing personal stories and lessons learned along the way. From their first nervous encounters with teaching adults to the surprising enjoyment of educating Disney animators, they highlight both the challenges and rewards of guiding others in art.

Traveling across various states to teach, they recount funny and bizarre experiences, like teaching in a sweltering Oklahoma garage or having a rental car accident with a participant. These anecdotes underscore the importance of staying adaptable and keeping a sense of humor in all situations.

The creator's passion for art and education shines through as they offer tips for both workshop teachers and attendees. By focusing on clear communication, patience, and preparation, they aim to inspire others to enjoy the workshop experience, whether as a teacher or a student.

Chapters

00:00 - 00:30: Introduction and Channel Update The creator introduces the video with an update about their channel's growth. They've gained 10 to 20 new subscribers in less than eight months, prompting them to feel the need to grow alongside their channel. In an attempt to reflect this growth, the creator humorously shares their recent purchase from Poshmark: a $15 H&M t-shirt, joking about the possible history of the shirt. The introduction ends with them expressing some regret about the purchase after seeing it on camera.
00:30 - 02:00: Imagination Painting and Underpainting The chapter titled 'Imagination Painting and Underpainting' discusses the early stages of creating a painting from imagination. The speaker describes the process of starting an underpainting and mentions being inspired by Bouguereau's style. The painting is being developed as an illustration, emphasizing the imaginative aspect of the drawing.
02:00 - 04:30: First Workshop Experience In this chapter titled 'First Workshop Experience', the author reflects on their creative journey, specifically focusing on a personal project - a book they may never complete and paintings they continuously work on. The narrator introduces a new character that they are developing through their art. They express frustration over a mistake made on an eye during the painting process, acknowledging its imperfections but choosing to embrace the flaw as part of the creative process. The chapter emphasizes perseverance and the acceptance of imperfections in artistic endeavors.
04:30 - 06:30: Teaching in Oklahoma The chapter titled 'Teaching in Oklahoma' opens with a conversational introduction where the speaker conveys a sense of humility by admitting that there is no possibility of impressing anyone, given the prominence of Alex Fedesia in their world. The speaker expresses a laid-back attitude, suggesting they will focus on their own interests ('work on this eye') while allowing other matters to settle on their own ('let it swim over there'). They hint at an introspective thought process ('thinking something') while acknowledging the disruptive environment ('knock into everything'). The speaker reflects on their intention to discuss the topic of teaching workshops, setting the stage for the content that follows in the chapter.
06:30 - 08:00: Lessons Learned from Teaching Workshops The chapter begins with a reflection on the speaker's experiences in teaching workshops, emphasizing an informal approach over strict chronology. The speaker reminisces about their first workshop, which took place at the Creolde Art Center.
08:00 - 10:30: Experiences at GCA The speaker recounts their experiences living in various places, including Winter Park, Florida, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York City, and briefly in Italy. They currently reside near Winter Park, Florida.
10:30 - 14:30: Still Life Painting Competition The narrator returns to Florida, near the location of their first art workshop at Crealde Arts Center. They reflect on the nervousness they felt during their first workshop, pointing out that as a young adult (21-22 years old), they stood out in an environment predominantly filled with adults. The situation was challenging, presenting a unique dynamic due to their age and the setting.
14:30 - 19:30: Snow College Workshops The chapter titled 'Snow College Workshops' focuses on an event in Central Florida, coinciding with a significant shift in Disney's operations. It was a period when Disney opted to either cut or entirely eliminate its animation department, or parts of it. The discussion acknowledges that the facts might not be entirely accurate, due to the timing of events in question.
19:30 - 25:00: Embarrassing Workshop Story The chapter titled 'Embarrassing Workshop Story' narrates an incident where the narrator, who was relatively unknown and had no reputation at the time, unexpectedly ended up conducting a workshop attended by several background artists from Disney. These artists had lost their jobs and somehow found their way to the narrator's little painting class, despite the narrator not being well-known in the industry. The narrator speculates that perhaps their participation was due to connections through community theater, specifically mentioning a production.
25:00 - 27:20: Conclusion and Channel Support In this workshop, the speaker felt both impressed and intimidated. Despite initial nerves, the experience was positive, largely due to a friendly young artist from Disney who made an effort to make the speaker feel comfortable. This artist, though still in his 20s, took the speaker, who was only 21 or 22 at the time, out to lunch. Their conversation helped ease the speaker's anxiety during the workshop.

TIPS for TAKING and TEACHING Art Workshops! Transcription

00:00 - 00:30 welcome to this new video you know i uh well my channel has just grown exponentially i've put on anywhere from 10 to 20 new subscribers in a little under eight months and so i feel like i need to grow with my channel and that's why i went to poshmark.com and splurged on this amazing h m t-shirt fifteen dollars god knows who died in it and uh yeah now i'm looking at it on cam and i'm regretting every part of that decision [Music] all right
00:30 - 01:00 so yeah let's just let's just get into this so here is a painting well it's a painting it's an underpainting i've just started i'm doing this from imagination i'm kind of looking at some bugaro paintings to kind of bring some bugaro ness into it and we'll see if that helps but the drawing is from imagination it's going to be an illustration for
01:00 - 01:30 the book that i will never finish writing or or or making paintings for but it's what keeps me going and so this is another little character from that i think and i totally messed up this eye here when i did the reinforcement and then the underpainting in it then i tried to fix it and it looks just awful it's kind of swimming off to the left but i'm not to the left but but i'm going to just keep going with it because it is what it is and i'm not what am i going to
01:30 - 02:00 do like try to impress you all you know i'm in a world we're all in the world with alex fedesia there's no impressing anyone at this point so it is what it is i'll just let it swim over there and uh i'll work on this eye and uh you know i don't know i want to talk about some things some stuff and i was kind of thinking something as i knock into everything i was thinking the thing i could talk about is teaching workshops
02:00 - 02:30 you know i'd like to you know i don't know that i'm going to stick to any kind of chronology here or order as i talk about my experience teaching workshops or my thoughts with workshops but it would be kind of fun for me to take a moment and think about the first workshop i ever taught and i got to think about what that would be i think it was at creole day creality creality art center or art school crealde
02:30 - 03:00 in winter park florida not too far from where i live now here's my address and i grew up in central florida i lived in connecticut and rhode island for years and years new york city um as well in italy have you heard i lived in italy briefly uh
03:00 - 03:30 but now i'm back in florida very near to where my first workshop took place at crealde arts arts center i think is the name of it but i was incredibly nervous again my first workshop at least the first i can remember and you know you walk in there and i was like 21 22 years old and these art centers are mostly you know they mostly consist of adults so i had to be the youngest person there certainly and here's the thing that made it even weirder or crazier or more challenging
03:30 - 04:00 this you know again central florida and it was right at a time you could probably figure out when this was based on what i'm about to say so my facts my facts could be a little off okay but it was right at a time when disney uh either cut or eliminated its animation department or at least a portion of it
04:00 - 04:30 certainly uh the artists that were doing background painting and traditional media a bunch of them got fired right at this time and a number of them ended up in my workshop somehow i don't know i don't know how that could have come about i had no reputation at the time nobody knew who i wasn't like i was like well known around town i did some community theater so maybe they knew me from two weeks with the queen but uh yeah i wasn't known at all i just had this little painting class and somehow these these artists from disney a number of them ended up in
04:30 - 05:00 in this workshop which i was obviously incredibly and blown away by and certainly intimidated uh but it basically went well and there was this one guy who was an artist from disney and i don't remember his name but he was super friendly he really made me feel at ease he was a young young guy too but you know me being 21 22 everybody was older but he had to be in his 20s still and he took me out to lunch and we taught and i talked and you know it was
05:00 - 05:30 a really positive experience i think my next actual workshop was after i got done studying in new york and i was contacted by a little uh sort of academy or classical art school in oklahoma and they they asked me if i wanted to teach a workshop and i was like heck yeah heck yeah i was working for minimum wage at the time i needed i needed all the help i could get so i said yes and i went to this workshop and uh it was at the woman who ran the uh
05:30 - 06:00 little group i was at her house her name was leslie she's great i love you leslie i've been talking to you in years but you were great and so i would never say anything um negative about that experience but it was run out of her house at the time eventually she got a place like a school building but uh you know it was oklahoma in the summer so it was eight gajillion degrees
06:00 - 06:30 and she had this um air conditioning unit in her garage which was where it was and there had to be like more than 20 like 30 i don't even know there was like so many people we had two models in this garage and then and then all the all the students it was so many people and it was an inferno it was so ungodly hot and i just remember just like sweat stinging my eyes trying to teach
06:30 - 07:00 and uh and leslie was so nice and you know i remember being sort of apologetic for the heat and i was like that's fine and everybody's so nice like one thing i learned about oklahoma is uh the sheer fear of imminent death by tornado um and also that oklahomans oklahoma oklahoma and indians they're really really really really really nice
07:00 - 07:30 like the sweetest people and very welcoming and i loved every minute i spent out there which i did end up spending several years out there but this particular workshop was a hot box and so i black i blocked out many of the memories but i do remember actually this one guy i hope he doesn't watch it he was nice but it was a little surreal um it was my first experience teaching
07:30 - 08:00 a retired medical doctor now it's strangely common to have students or artists wanting to get good at classical painting that have a background in the medical field i don't know exactly why but i've had a disproportionate number of
08:00 - 08:30 former doctors enter into my classes or my workshops which i find kind of interesting you know they come out of this profession highly respected highly revered in fact this guy i think he ran it like a wing like an entire wing of the hospital so talk about like big time he was a very impressive person like when you talk to him in that capacity you're like holy crap and i'm like an idiot so i'm talking to him i'm like i don't in what world should i be talking to you but you know
08:30 - 09:00 somehow i'm teaching this class and he's in there and so i remember he wanted to like kind of i don't know he wanted to hang out he was like in his 60s or something and it was like really young and so he was like hey let me uh let me show you around oklahoma tonight let me show you the real oklahoma the oklahoma the tourists don't see you know and so i was like okay and so we started driving well i drove to his house
09:00 - 09:30 and i had a rental car by the way so i had this rental car and i parked it at his house and then he showed me around his house and it was really nice house and uh kind of house you get when you run a wing of a hospital you know and so it was really nice and then um he was like let me let me show you around town and so we go out and we get in his car you know in his car this was kind of new at the time you know because this was years ago he had like the the cam where you could see behind behind you
09:30 - 10:00 uh where you're backing up and now that's like in every car right but like at the time again i was like oh that's really cool you know and he starts backing up and i was like my god my rental car is full view it's like just his rear view camera is trained completely on the nose of my rental car he's backing up and i'm like well my god he's got all these mirrors and he's got this screen here he's not going to hit it i mean he's not going to hit and he hit it oh he hit it
10:00 - 10:30 like right into it like he was trying trying to hit it but i don't think he was trying because he seemed genuinely surprised and shocked by his his uh mistake we went out and he was like ah you know you can't even see it the dent which i could see clearly with my own eyes because it was huge and all the blood drained out of my face and he spent the next 10 minutes telling me that there's no way in the world anyone would notice it it wasn't a big deal but of course i was freaked out because
10:30 - 11:00 i didn't have any money at the time again i was working minimum wage this workshop was my big break and here i am this doctor runs into my car so we get in his car again i don't know why i had no confidence at the time so i just went along with whatever he said and we went around oklahoma we went down a street and there were some houses and he was like look at those and then we went to an area where there were like these stores and businesses and he's like
11:00 - 11:30 check that out and i was like cool so anyway that that went uh uneventfully but the workshop was really interesting i think at that time i was trying to impart some basic knowledge things i learned as a student and some of those things include you know fairly simple things and and if you go into a workshop like this and you think like what can i do in a week that will be actually useful you know to these people that are paying like in my mind a lot of money to have this time with you and for me it's just some sometimes it's just basic practices
11:30 - 12:00 you know some things that will just make it easier and you can replicate uh you know on your own and and some of that is lighting the model using the one light blocking out other lights trying to figure out where other shadows double shadows are coming from you know setting up your drawing to where you can sort of see your subject and see your drawing you know in clear view in a way that is easier to kind of see mistakes so that's you know that's a big part of it
12:00 - 12:30 uh and and people can definitely take that uh with them then i think to you know just that drawing process and demoing that drawing process that was very hard to demo at this particular workshop because i was covered in sweat just this like insane sheen and anyone trying to look at me demo was having difficulty focusing because the glare just bouncing off of my shiny face but yeah you try to
12:30 - 13:00 just sort of show the basic process and here's the thing and and this is a mistake i don't know if i made this mistake in this workshop but i made this mistake so often early on when i was teaching was that i would i would try to over complicate things to just seem smarter than i am you know to seem like i really deserve to be there you know i was very insecure and so i would make i would use terms and expressions that maybe didn't
13:00 - 13:30 commun communicate the idea as clearly as it i should have but it was it was more from my own ego or my lack of confidence that i did things like that and so if i have a piece of advice or something that i would recommend avoiding is don't do that you're not going to impress anyone at all you're probably going to misuse the word which is a big sign of a narcissist so don't do that
13:30 - 14:00 try to make it as understandable as possible if it is a complicated concept like trying to explain the way a highlight works on a surface you know try to put it in the most common terms humanly possible now there are some people who come into your workshop and they'll know this stuff they followed your blog post they watched your videos whatever it is and they they're kind of you can see and and you get this from talking to them that they're sort of on the same page and so you can kind of skip certain things
14:00 - 14:30 other people don't even really have experience mixing paint that's fine you know i'm kind of going into this eye here i want to go up to this brow form here and i want to sort of get some different colors going because i'm doing this from imagination and sort of vaguely referring to other paintings that don't quite match with it i'm getting more monochromatic and generic so i want to get a little bit i want to kind of move to a different area and sort of get a little bit of a different hue pattern going here and so i'm going to go a little bit more
14:30 - 15:00 yellow with a little bit more ochre in the mix and see if i can get something kind of going here i don't i'm not excited about these results right now but i'm being patient i think it's going to get where i want it to go and i'm kind of going the scenic route here kind of building up these forms around it i'm a little bit more likely to do that and cautious when i am working at least partially from imagination
15:00 - 15:30 but i think it's going to be the kind of thing that sort of pulls together or snaps together once there's some accents once there's some sharper edges in there the next series of workshops i did was that uh and this kind of over overlapped oklahoma i was teaching at gca in the core program and uh so i was doing workshops there i did a lot of workshops there in fact i think before i think i did a summer workshop there before i started in the core
15:30 - 16:00 program maybe i might have been a class that i was doing i can't really remember um but then i started doing workshops there and uh oh my gosh that those were fun um they're really stressful i mean they were the most stressful workshops at gca because it's a very competitive environment it was very competitive environment maybe now it's not maybe not super chill um but uh there's this feeling like you know you would have a lot of people that would be from the
16:00 - 16:30 core program people that studied full-time would be in your workshop and they were like you know oftentimes better than you were you know you're trying to do a demo and teach and then there's people in the room that are like just blowing you out of the water it just sort of you know messes with your confidence but it's a good environment it's good and i'll tell you teaching there and i'll talk about my experience teaching there at some point in the future um teaching in the core program because there's uh there's lots to say but i will say that
16:30 - 17:00 teaching there makes you a far better artist and teacher because you've got when you say something you can't slide like you're gonna get a lot of people that push back and are like is that really true and you're like i don't know i had probably my worst experience teaching a workshop there you know i try to like everybody wants as much time as they can have with you and you've got to try to figure out how to give them that give them something useful but then like extract yourself in the situation and get the next person and there's a woman there i start to pick up on her being
17:00 - 17:30 really pissed because i i'm not spending enough time with her and so i just noticed her like she looked at this right like she's sitting on a bench you know she's like there's some people easels and there's a bench that's right and then i i would come up to her and i'd come up to her and she'd be like like turn her head away from me and uh so i could tell she was mad i'd be like what's going on are you okay like is everything all right and she'll be like
17:30 - 18:00 and then finally at some point i kind of snapped which is not common for me i think on like the third day and i was like listen i understand you don't like the workshop or whatever but i just you got you can't be so disrespectful because other people paid money and this is impacting everyone in the room she was being so open about it and she was trying to like start
18:00 - 18:30 like a thing like a walkout but everybody else was fine in the workshop except for her anyway 99.9 of experience is positive you have that one and it's you know it's the it's the lesson in life i guess it's just like social media navigating that space you scroll past all the positive comments and then one person's like that eye looks weird and you're like my god i hate painting and then you like almost delete your account so there were a lot of workshops i did at gca and uh most of
18:30 - 19:00 them i taught while i was a teacher there and one of them this was still when it was mid mid midtown it was uh it's during the summer so regular core classes weren't going on and i was doing this workshop in the one room and then in the next room well there were three rooms in a row uh in in midtown manhattan and there are huge rooms and so there was like this middle room and then a giant cast hall or there's this first room
19:00 - 19:30 a giant cast hall in the middle and then a figure painting room on the far end and in that far end room they were doing a still life painting competition and this was sort of a semi-annual kind of kind of deal and the 10 best still life artists that applied to be in the competition were in this competition and there was some pretty big names in it um at the time i guess i guess some of them are still
19:30 - 20:00 pretty big names um and i so i was teaching in the one room i was teaching my little portrait painting class and you know what i actually just recently found the image of the demo i did in this portrait painting class the week of the story competition here it is i painted i did this drawing and then i did this little form painting of an eye a lot like what i'm painting here and this is actually the painting i did from this workshop um and so yeah like uh
20:00 - 20:30 during our breaks in my workshop we could go over and kind of like peek at the still life competition and then when they took breaks you could kind of go in and look at what everybody was painting and uh and they worked all week the exact time frame that my class was going on so we got to see these still lives unfold and uh so mike michael klein was there uh mike klein and uh he was painting and uh mike's up mike's well you know we don't hang out or you know it's funny i always talk about these people and i'm like oh they're a friend of mine we don't stay in touch
20:30 - 21:00 and i'm starting to feel like i'm not good at friendships but mike and i go way back and uh and so i like mike a lot and i think he's a fantastic painter uh specifically uh his still lives are amazing and i like his style and justin wood was there and uh justin was still a student at the time at gc i think i don't know i don't know but anyway he was there painting and then
21:00 - 21:30 the one the only cesar santos was there anyway so at the end of the week they do the judging you know and this is overlapping with the end of my workshop and i don't remember who was the judge there were several i think tony sir and i was the judge from suggested donation and uh and so yeah mike klein won first place and um i loved his painting uh it was aesthetically
21:30 - 22:00 amazing and just really well done and so he went first place and then uh justin one second i think and then uh and then cesar one third they announced the prizes and the people are going up and shaking hands and i went to the bathroom you know and it was just me in there and then cezar came in he was so mad um i don't know if he hit anything like the the paper towel holder i thought
22:00 - 22:30 maybe he did i feel like there was like violence happening around me i was trying to pee you know and i feel so vulnerable and there was like a whirlwind of anger around me and he was like cursing and he was saying how it was a charity case i was a little rattled i was trying to zip up and get out of there as quickly as i could but it was an interesting thing to sort of witness it was a little bit like he used to make these videos a long time ago where he'd be like in the
22:30 - 23:00 gym with his shirt off like and he'd be like sort of like yelling and like super amped up and like do like a million jumping jacks or something and you can see the people in the background like what the crap is this guy doing but it was that like it was that energy that he did in these shirtless exercise videos he's a really really talented painter no he's not going to see this but no issue with him he's just really really unhappy that he didn't win
23:00 - 23:30 wow mike's painting was definitely the best he's definitely the best i don't even remember justin's but justin's a great painter so i can only imagine it deserved it i remember cesar is having a lot of stuff in it there's a lot of stuff well painted a lot of stuff a lot of stuff a lot of anger cesar santos and around the same time i think this overlapped and then went on for years after this
23:30 - 24:00 really went on until up to like covid when this kind of ended another venue i taught workshops in was uh at snow college in ephraim utah and uh that was just a wonderful experience and it was great because i will say that i had so many repeat students year after year in such a warm incredible community it was honestly the best workshop environment workshop experience uh i think i'd ever had and at that point i kind of knew how to do it in a way that was um effective i think
24:00 - 24:30 or most useful to the people going uh to the workshop basically what i explained before you figure out like what can you give the people taking the workshop in those five days how can you break up your time the only criticism i have there is they overstuffed the classes i'd have like 8 20 people but a lot like oklahoma people in utah are like the nicest people imaginable their whole format and way of teaching a workshop you know compared to the other ones where
24:30 - 25:00 it's like you know it's it's it tends to be sort of your workshop you know and uh the week is a you know sort of build as this week sort of studying with you and to whatever degree it was like that at snow college but it was part of this event they have called summer snow which i highly recommend um really really really recommend it um i did it i did it maybe four times no three times four times i can't remember and i will tell you this the organizers there is a guy brad taggart um adam
25:00 - 25:30 larson and and the two of them i think still put it on they're fantastic if you are anywhere near uh eve from utah snow college and they bring in different instructors all the time and i i couldn't recommend it more highly in terms of just the experience there and that seemed you know and i got to know the students there and everybody had a wonderful time always there
25:30 - 26:00 and those uh individuals brad and adam are awesome and then there's scott allred who i became friends with he i think i don't know if he runs the painting department or the figure department i can't remember his exact title but he was sort of perfectly affiliated with running snow but he and i hung out a lot because we both like star wars we both named scott there's like a real i don't know if you know this about scots but when we see each other you know not scott peterson um but they would have this whole event and so there would be like five workshops basically going
26:00 - 26:30 on five or six maybe and you know you'd have these breakout groups and every every day one of the teachers it must have been five because every day over the course of the week one of the teachers would have to do a giant presentation during lunch in their big auditorium room and uh i don't know how many it sits i'm so bad at guessing this it could have been like 200 it might have been 4 000. i don't know it was a big room and you had to do
26:30 - 27:00 like a um slideshow presentation and you know show your artwork and and kind of talk about your life your experience making art and you know your students that were in your class were in the auditorium but so were all the people at the whole event so it was like filled with people it was really crowded and uh and pretty intimidating i'm gonna tell you my most embarrassing
27:00 - 27:30 workshop story in just a moment but let me get this iris in so there's this one year
27:30 - 28:00 at a snow college i don't even know why i'm telling you this story um so we were about to break for lunch one day and it happened to be my day to do the presentation in
28:00 - 28:30 that big auditorium right so i had to go in there and you know everyone at the event was going to pile in you know all the seats would be filled the stairs up to the seats people would be standing along uh those uh stair and be on the sort of wings of the uh not stage but the desk or whatever in front of the big screen that the slideshow's happening so everybody's there and we're about to go uh in for my presentation we have about like five minutes left
28:30 - 29:00 uh in the morning session and uh you know i drink a lot of coffee i uh i like a good cup of coffee um i can't call it cup of joe i just can't i can't i can't do it so yeah the uh the dark side of drinking a lot of coffee is frequent urination it's just a part of uh a part of the coffee addict's life and normally i handle that just fine i just get up and i go to the bathroom and
29:00 - 29:30 there's no real problem unfortunately i also battle another form of addiction and that is to my phone yes i know many of us suffer from it i can't look away especially social media so moments before i had to go in and do my presentation i went to the bathroom and like an idiot got out my phone and i decided to scroll through
29:30 - 30:00 instagram and then i finished going the bathroom i put my phone in my pocket and i go to zip up and sure enough yes indeed i peed all over my leg like completely all the way down to my shoe i uh went over and i scrounged around for some paper towels and tried to blot it was clear that it would take more than that so then i tried friction i tried like vigorously rubbing so that the heat would would make the water the urine go away and obviously that didn't didn't work
30:00 - 30:30 and so i i only had one choice i went to the sink and i turned on the water and i just splashed it like all over myself like up up high all the way down the other leg down like my entire front i needed it to be so wet that urine couldn't be the explanation like a pipe must have burst he must have fell in into a manhole and then i just walked in the room and i gave my presentation and that was that and i was just wet
30:30 - 31:00 nobody nobody said anything and i remained wet for a while and i'm sure i smelled like a toilet for the rest of the afternoon while i critiqued so anyone out there who is present for this that distinctly recalls the smell of ammonia that is what happened well you know
31:00 - 31:30 i think teaching workshops i think taking workshops is worthwhile i think if you're someone taking a workshop you know i think it's uh just important you go in with certain expectations you know and i think that's generally true most most the artists i work with in workshops go in there knowing what what it is and are realistic about what they can get out of it just but i would mostly pay attention to the process the order in which that artist does things make sure you really take note of that
31:30 - 32:00 try to see figure out their conceptual framework you know a lot of artists will sort of explain it you know i would hope and it's what i i always try to do um and make sure you come away knowing what they're thinking about right i can only assume you're studying with an artist whose work you really love
32:00 - 32:30 so really try to understand are they looking at shapes abstractly are they bringing that mode of thought into the painting is that why so-and-so's brushwork looks the way it does and they have these beautiful like facets because they're staying sort of interested in the sort of flat abstract nature of these shapes are they like me are they really in this form mode where the first thought is i want it to look 3d that doesn't mean you're going to always know what to do with your marks after the workshop workshops are so short and over like that but you can at least know
32:30 - 33:00 where my mind was you can know the order in which i did things and you can kind of replicate that on your own uh and so i think that getting a basic sense focusing on what their thought process is and then uh remembering and recording their sequence the order in which they did things is gives you a really simple thing to kind of follow and continue to build on later on
33:00 - 33:30 [Music] you know another thing some other things i would talk about from the point of view of teaching workshops if you're somebody who's doing it apologize a lot if you're running behind as you're critiquing just apologize to the point of being annoying it's less annoying overall than the people in the class thinking that you don't care or that you're just sort of blowing them off also i know this is common sense don't take long lunches especially if you're going out with
33:30 - 34:00 a small group of the students don't go out with them for a long time and come in a half hour late listen i've been held hostage before where i couldn't get back because i'm not the one that drove and i was trying to be polite and so i've been put in that situation where it happens and it doesn't feel good and people don't like it people don't like it when you do that and uh and so definitely avoid that always be on time i know it's such common sense but you have no idea
34:00 - 34:30 how often i've witnessed that also don't touch your students ever ever don't ever touch them in any way it's never okay this is especially true if you're doing a color workshop and you need to test color don't put color swatches on a student's arm don't put a little piece of paint on them and then lick it off don't do that i've never done it i'm aware of that kind of thing happening don't do it it's creepy it's weird don't do it don't ever do it
34:30 - 35:00 when i look over the camera this shirt is just what am i wearing this is like offensive i'm going to get flagged this video is going to be like i have a like a advisory warning seriously why am i wearing this like microphone can't be like the fabric won't support it all right
35:00 - 35:30 hold on i want this eye to be good i'm going to stop talking about workshops i have said nothing useful i'm an idiot let's just paint this eye the truth is i haven't been able to make a good video in a while i've been having to like stop recording all of them because i've just been spewing i haven't been feeling well and so my i've been like breaking up in cold sweats and then um i also just haven't been able to formulate thoughts so whatever this video is i'm going with it
35:30 - 36:00 all right let's put in the pupil
36:00 - 36:30 i'm going to zoom in on the painting itself here
36:30 - 37:00 all right i'm gonna leave this here i think it's fine it's a good start
37:00 - 37:30 i like the eye and i think the painting will just be wonderful anyway i don't know what this video was thank you for sticking with me this long for what can only amount to a lot of nonsense about workshops but if you like my channel and you want to support what i
37:30 - 38:00 do here and you want to see better tutorials check me out at patreon.com or you can go to my website scottwellfineart.com or if nothing else just like this video and subscribe to the channel and in return i promise to never wear this shirt again i'll see you in the next video
38:00 - 38:30 you