Tsfat

Camels, Posters, and Paint Nights

Tsfat Safed landscape overlooking Mount Hermon
Have you ever been to a paint night? What did you paint? Was it a learning experience, or were you just given some paints and told: “here ya go.”

This past year I was privileged to host two paint nights. For the first one, I did a slide show. I showed perspective, a value study, and a possible finished project. I got feedback later: “I wanted more instruction.”

So when I had the opportunity to host a paint night for a smaller crowd recently, I decided to teach people one on one or in small groups. I publicized the paint night with a poster; I painted the Tsfat or Safed scene that I photographed years ago as a border. The materials given out were acrylic paints, not the sort of paints I have used much. I handed out pencils and some paper, and I showed the participants how to divide up the page into parts, so what they thought was a difficult subject became easier to handle. I pointed out the natural mountains at the top of the scene and the architectural, man-made elements below. Some chose to just paint the mountains. A few tackled the whole scene and did both. Others just played with the paints and chatted with their friends.

tsfat in acrylic with white center
This was my first attempt at a border for advertising the paint night. I made the white too small.

tsfat border with white for allowing text, acrylic paint
So I painted again, and this one became the border for the details of the paint night.

At the top of this post is a watercolor that I painted from the Tsfat or Safed scene that I chose as the subject for the paint night. Since there has been a lot of upsetting news coming from Israel lately, we went with an Israeli theme for the paint night.

Due to the disheartening news, I decided to post a subject that was Israeli but warmer in nature. I revisited a photograph that I had taken years ago of Yemin Moshe, an old, elegant neighborhood outside of the Old City of Jerusalem. I did an interpretation in gouache:
Yemin Moshe in Jerusalem

Getting back to posters, I have been publicizing a series of talks by our local rabbi. Each one is a “parshat hashavua” or Torah portion of the week. For each poster I read the Torah portion well in advance and look for visual ideas that I can put in a poster. In the Torah portion of Hayei Sarah, Rebecca feeds not only Eliezer but also his camels. Camels! I took out children’s books about camels from the library, and I had fun drawing and painting a few camel scenes.
camel in pencil

camels watercolor walking in a line

Back to paint night: I have two ideas for upcoming ones:

  • Teach how to mix a palette of hue, tint, shade (color, lighter version of that color, darker version of color). Start with a blue, red, and a yellow (primary colors).
  • Only black: only allow black for the first half an hour. Then they get treated to pink, turquoise, and lavender/purple.

The inspiration for the only black paint night was a participant wanted some black paint. I had left out the black paint on purpose, so students would mix their own darks. It got me thinking: how could we make good use of black? Using only black would force the students to think about darks and lights. Am I being too strict?

What would you want to learn at a paint night?

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