What to Leave In & What to Leave Out: The Between Steps

With professional artist Nancy Slaght as your guide, you will have fun exploring some ways to take a colour photo through a series of steps, resulting in compositions you can take home and paint from in your preferred medium.

Beginning with your colour, and black and white photo of the same image, we will sequentially do exercises to edit the important information, determine the values (darks and lights), explore colour choices and decide upon how much detailed representation or simplified impression you desire.

The goal is to arrive at a couple of strong compositions for 2 or 3 of your photos that you could then use on your own to paint from using your preferred medium. In essence: what to put in what to leave out!

Materials to bring:

- a sketchbook or mixed media paper at least 90 lb, ideally 9 x 12”

- 2 or 3 of your own photos both in colour but also black and white of the same photos. Printer copies are fine.

- If you have graphite pencils and a kneadable eraser, do bring along. ( Nancy will also provide a couple of varieties of graphite sticks and chamois to apply powdered graphite)

- If you have coloured pencils : regular, watercolour, graphatint or pastel do bring them. (If using watercolour or graphatint pencils bring a brush and a small water container with lid.)

- soft pastels optional

About your Instructor:

Nancy Slaght, Victoria artist and teacher, ponders the next leap of her imagination in search of the metaphor. “I love portraying, in a still life painting, two aspects of life that exist in a fleeting moment capturing movement in a freeze-framed images that seem to hesitate just long enough for the viewer to share the moment.”

Muse comes from her walks along the waterfront, music and ballroom dancing. Inspiration results in fanciful or odd notions of pairings for her paintings. She has had a lengthy love affair with soft pastels and more recently added mixed media : acrylic inks, watercolour, drawing materials and collage .

Nancy is an exhibiting artist and is represented by the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, Massey Gallery Arts and Rentals, and South Shore Gallery, Sooke B.C. Her work is held in private collections in Canada, United States, Japan and Europe.

She is also an inspiring teacher at home and away. Chosen by Painters Lodge and Painter’s artists, she became a Life-Time Resident Artist in 2003 until it’s cessation in 2016.

Any questions can be directed to Nancy at [email protected] or 250-686-

3638.

Host or Publisher Arts & Culture Colwood Society